


Skyfire

by Speedy1236



Series: Triple Threat Novels [5]
Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (Video Games), Sonic the Hedgehog - All Media Types
Genre: Best Friends, Echidna Culture, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Slice of Life, Team Feels, Team as Family, Worldbuilding, lots of worldbuilding, team sonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:33:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23159341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Speedy1236/pseuds/Speedy1236
Summary: Theoretically, Sonic and Tails had other plans, but when they find out an ancient and important echidna holiday is coming around, they head up to Angel Island to crash an echidna party instead. Knuckles isn't so sure what to make of that, but at least he's trying.A Triple Threat Story with plenty of Team Sonic friendship feels and really quite over the top world building. An explory, talky, geeky story full of details and concepts, with just a dash of action.
Relationships: Knuckles the Echidna & Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna & Miles "Tails" Prower & Sonic the Hedgehog, Knuckles the Echidna & Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles "Tails" Prower & Sonic the Hedgehog
Series: Triple Threat Novels [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1359424
Comments: 56
Kudos: 90





	1. The Alignment

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set some undeterminded time after Sonic Heroes, and before Sonic Forces. I had already written some parts of it by the time Forces came out.
> 
> This fic has been a sort of side project for the longest time. I'd come back to it whenever I was in the mood, but I was in no rush to go anywhere with it. Consequently it had a lot of time to slowly develop its ideas and concepts, and then about half a year ago quickly grew in length and complexity because then I had some time. I loved writing it. Like, so much. It's a very self-indulgent story; I started it just to have lots of space to focus on things that I'd wanted to explore in more depth for a long time.
> 
> It's probably an unusual story. It takes a lot of time with its ideas, it explores lore and history, language, culture and science. It's one for the geeks and loremasters, for the fans of theories and background ideas, for those enjoying slice of life, a dash of angst, and lots of friendship.
> 
> This story might not be for everyone. If you love Team Sonic friendship feels and really quite over the top world building, it's probably for you. If you hate those things or come looking for a fast paced plot, this fic is probably not for you. It's an explory, talky, geeky story full of details and weird concepts. I had tons of fun writing it and researching for it, and I hope some of you will enjoy it as much. But don't say I didn't warn you. ;)

**The Alignment**

"Hey, Sonic!" It was Tails' excited shouting that pulled Sonic out of an afternoon nap in the sun.

"Huh?" The blue hedgehog cracked an eye open and squinted against the sunlight, leaning down slightly from his spot on the roof of Tails' workshop and house. "What's up for you to -" The words were cut off by a yawn. "-for you to come running like this?" Sonic finished with a grin.

"Here, this just came with the newest issue of Mobian Science Today." Now that he looked more closely, Sonic noticed the piece of paper Tails was holding. "They're letting a select few people into the catacombs below the pyramids they unearthed in the deserts south of Shamar. You can apply for a visit here if you're quick. I think it sounds cool?" There was a question there and a look was thrown up at Sonic.

The hedgehog jumped off the roof to land at Tails' side. "Catacombs sound cool, yeah," he nodded. Exploring old ruins always turned out fun, and after the latest defeat Eggman was lying low and Sonic's life could use some extra action, or just a fun trip.

Tails beamed. "I was thinking we could ask Knuckles, too, old ruins are quite up his alley."

"Good idea," Sonic agreed. Their echidna friend needed to get off his island more, and it seemed a promising excuse. "I'll call him!"

* * *

It took four attempts, a climb up a hill for signal boosting, a run to pass the time and a snack of chili dogs in between lots of waiting out radio silence until Sonic managed to get Knuckles to answer his communicator. Sonic knew he didn't carry it around like normal people did, but tended to leave it to lie around somewhere, so your chances of getting the echidna to answer his radio were bigger in the evening hours when Knuckles would come home. Kind of like Sonic, he didn't always come home, though, and even his overall lack of patience aside, when it came to trying to raise Knuckles via radio it was Sonic and not Tails who coped with the long lack of reply better.

"Yes?"

Sonic grinned. Another thing about talking to Knuckles via radio was that he didn't seem to pick up the common phrases to start a conversation. "Hey Knux, this is Sonic."

"Don't tell me Eggman's back at it already." He sounded a little exasperated.

Sonic laughed. "No, all's quiet. It's about something else. Tails would be able to get tickets for visiting the underground catacombs below an ancient pyramid. It doesn't open often, and not for many people, so it's a rare chance. We thought you might like to come."

There was a brief pause. "It does sound interesting," Knuckles trailed. "When did you say it was?"

"Two weeks from now."

"... I don't have time, I have plans."

Sonic blinked stupidly at his communicator for a second. When you were trying to talk that grump of an echidna into having some fun, you usually had to expect resistance. The common "guardian duty, no time for fun" kind of argument. That was what was normal. Since when did Knuckles have plans? It was early summer, and no time for any harvesting or whatnot yet that could keep Knuckles busy. "You have plans," Sonic echoed, just to confirm.

"Sure I do," Knuckles grumbled. "Don't you have any? Did you forget the date? Seems like you, but unlike Tails... Don't you guys have anywhere to be?" He sounded a familiar, but unexpected mix of confused and annoyed now.

"Anywhere to be for what?" Sonic stared at the radio, unable to stare at Knuckles in person.

There was a sigh. "The Alignment, Sonic?"

"What alignment?" Sonic scratched behind his ear.

" _The_ Alignment?" Knuckles sounded incredulous now. "Are you kidding me?"

"No, really, what sort of alignment? What are you aligning?"

"Go try to prank someone else, Sonic, I don't have time for this." There came a rustle and crack and then statics.

"Knuckles? Did you hang up on me?" Sonic shook his head to himself. "He hung up on me... Now that went well."

* * *

"He hung up on you?" Tails stared at him. "What did you say to him? It's so like you two to get into a fight even via voice calls..."

"I didn't say anything that could've upset him," Sonic defended himself. He liked to rile Knuckles up for fun at times, but he'd been trying to do the opposite, and he still had no idea what he'd done wrong. "First he sounded like he wanted to come, but then he said he didn't have time. He was constantly on about some alignment."

"Alignment?" Tails frowned. "Of what?"

Sonic shrugged. "No idea, he didn't say, and I kind of think he thought I knew what was up with it and trying to get on his nerves by pretending not to know?" Thinking back, this seemed the most likely explanation on what had happened.

"We could try again and ask?"

Sonic folded his arms. "Good luck with that."

"Hmm." Tails frowned. "It's still weird."

* * *

His customary long evening run had driven the thought of their friend's weird behaviour mostly from Sonic's mind, and he stepped back into the hangar a bit hungry, but relaxed.

He found Tails sitting in front of his computer, screens filled with graphs, text, but also pictures.

"New project I don't know about yet?" Sonic walked up to him to look over his shoulder. "Is that a star chart?" He leaned in closer.

Tails nodded. "I think I found out what Knuckles was talking about."

Sonic's gaze trailed incredulously over the screen before he raised a brow at Tails. "Knuckles does astronomy?"

Tails frowned. "I'm not sure. I was thinking about what he could've meant, but I couldn't come up with anything. Until I went back to my magazine." He pointed at the glossy paper on the table to the side. It remained open on a page near the middle, showing an article headlined by a photo of a starry sky behind the black silhouette of a Mobius Loop. "It's an article about the rare alignment, or _grouping_ , as it's normally called, of the planets," Tails continued.

"The planets," Sonic repeated.

"Yes. All planets orbit the sun, but at different speeds." Tails turned back to his computer, and quick fingers pulled up a moving image, with a small yellow sun in the middle and tiny dots for planets that circled it. "The planets move at different speeds, so usually some are on one side of the sun, and the others on the other side, also from our planet's perspective. Sometimes, though, some of them will coincide."

The fox opened up another window that showed a picture of five bright dots against a dark background. It was drawing, not a photo, and the artist had added the horizon, the planets' names and a bunch of numbers that meant nothing to Sonic.

Tails was still speaking, though. "When two planets align it's called a conjunction. Those are pretty common and easy to observe; they happen several times per year. Groupings, in particular larger groupings, are exceedingly rare and don't happen particularly regularly. Sometimes they happen as often as several times per year, then they don't happen for 200 years, and a good amount of those that do happen are only visible from a few positions on our planet, or they end up obscured by the sun because they happen during daylight, for example."

Tails pointed back at his magazine. "This year, we see the rare grouping of the five closest planets to Mobius, those you can see with the naked eye. Visible quintuplets happen between 50 and several hundred years apart, sometimes not in a thousand years even, so astronomers all over the world are looking forward to observing it."

The blue hedgehog needed a moment to digest the lengthy science monologue Tails had thrown at him again, but he had Practice. "So, this year five planets can be seen close together in the sky and that's a thing that happens only every few hundred years, so it's a big deal for geeks that like stars. That all makes sense," Sonic allowed, trailing the small planets on the screen as they circled their sun. It was hypnotising. "But I have trouble thinking Knuckles a science geek who'll happily sit around with his telescope all night to look at some rare gathering of planets."

Tails shut off the distracting images and span round in his chair to face Sonic. "I've been at this point, too, yes. I think it might be something religious, or a cultural event."

"Religious or cultural," Sonic repeated.

"Yes." Tails turned back to his computer, the planets and star charts vanished to be replaced with pictures of the ruins of an Echidna temple and a collection of photos and drawings showing hieroglyphics resembling those on the walls in the underground tunnels up on Angel Island. "The old Echidnas used a very complicated calendar, but some of its events were based on astronomic observation. Lunar phases, and the movement of other celestial bodies, like certain stars."

"Or planets." Sonic raked a hand through his quills. "So, you think we're looking at some sort of Echidnaen New Year or whatnot?"

Tails shrugged. "Not a new year, historians aren't sure about much concerning Knuckles' ancestors, but they are sure they knew a yearly cycle similar to ours. But as I said, it's really complex." He pointed at a picture. "To decipher the date here, you need to do quite some math, and pick out which part of it retains to which cycle, 'cause there are several."

"A very complicated new year then? A new cycle of however many years a cycle has?" Sonic frowned. "This is kind of mind-blowing. Then again, Knuckles seemed to think I was silly to not know." He grinned.

"If I'm right, it's some kind of important event in his culture." Tails turned back around. "There's probably supposed to be some sort of celebration." He bit his lip, the large ears drooping low. "But Knuckles is the only one of his kind, there isn't anyone to celebrate with him. It's sad to think he's so alone."

Sonic frowned. "He may be the last of his kind, but he's got us, too. What do you think, we scrap the trip and crash an Echidna party instead?"

Tails looked doubtful. "We have no idea what this is even about. Maybe he wants to be alone for it..."

Sonic shook his head. "No party is meant to celebrate alone, no matter how ancient. He survived decorating a tree with us."

"You think that means he'd survive us ruining his traditional celebration?" Tails grinned. "Sure?"

Sonic grinned back. "Don't be so negative, I've been to so many celebrations, this can't be weirder than throwing fake fish at people during that river-flood festival I once attended in that jungle zone, or the party where you'd get showered in colour powder, or, you know, decorating trees to keep presents under them. It's all fun."

Tails stared at him thoughtfully. "You know, you're kind of right, most traditions are weird."

Sonic nodded. "Can't be much worse."

Tails glanced back at his screen. "And we got two weeks for additional research so we don't turn up entirely unprepared."

"Think that'll help? We could just fly up there and ask Knuckles to just let us attend, and try to wing it as we always do."

Tails grimaced. "Your idea can be our Plan B."


	2. The Leaning Towers

Knuckles carefully tested his grip on the rockface, then when he was sure it would hold his weight, he let go with his right hand to pull his tools from the bag slung over his shoulder.

Below him, the crevice fell a good fifty meters at least, sharp, dark rock carved out by water going down this way every spring with the snowmelt. The blackness of the stone betrayed the island's volcanic origin. It wasn't far to Lava Reef, where the heat in the island's core still bubbled to the surface.

Carefully Knuckles worked to fit the pieces for the support of a new bridge into the wall. The volcanic rock was hard, but could be porose and crack under strain or pressure.

When he was done, Knuckles pulled himself back up over the edge. A few meters away, the ropes and wooden planks that would make up the new bridge already waited to be installed. A bad storm a few days prior had sent the previous one down to the bottom of the crevice. Like with many things on the island, he wasn't sure how old it had been. He had not built it; it had been here as long as he remembered. Had his parents? Someone else? He had no idea when his people had vanished from the island. All that he knew was that he'd never found a trace of them or their departure.

The island was full of ruins, the remnants of buildings hundreds to thousands of years old. Whatever people had lived in more recently, if it wasn't the ruins, he'd found no evidence. He didn't remember finding more traces when he was younger. He remembered searching, lots of searching, shouting into tunnels and down holes and crawling into spaces that he had no chance of fitting in anymore now that he was grown, but there had been nothing to be found. It was as if whoever had decided to leave the island - leave him? - had taken careful measures to cover all their tracks.

It seemed hard to imagine that anyone would leave a child, even the destined Guardian, all on his own up here. Even with nothing but the safety of the Emerald in mind, many of the mistakes he'd made as Guardian that had endangered the Master Emerald had ultimately been down to the inexperience and naivety of youth. He'd probably acted more wisely with anyone around for guidance who would offer their experiences and wisdom.

He'd considered maybe an illness, a natural catastrophe, something like that, but that didn't explain the lack of traces of recent habitation on the Floating Island.

Knuckles' gaze dropped down into the dark crevice again, where far below the tattered remains of the broken bridge hung precariously between boulders and the rare, sturdy trees that had found a crack or two to grow roots in the steep slopes.

The bridges were traces of his more recent ancestors' lives, he supposed. They were made of wood and rope, mostly. Out in the open like this, all year round exposed to the weather, they could last twenty, thirty, maybe fourty years. Longer inside or in protected spots, but it seemed unlikely the construction would last a century.

Some of the more temperate zones further down the mountains had growth patterns of fruit bearing trees and other plans that were too organized to be natural, and probably also too organized that the last time anyone had gardened there could be as long ago as the date of the building of the ruins.

Knuckles sighed. He knew he wouldn't unravel the mystery of how and why he'd come to be the last echidna today, covered in mud and with lots of work still to do. He'd made no progress on finding answers researching in the old library, or on his more eager, or desperate, searches as a child. It was pointless to dwell on it, here and now.

The Guardian threw a brief look to the far horizon. From up here, lots of the island stretched out below, green and vibrant with the colours of summer. Today only a few clouds clung to the island's edge and base, and further out the surface of the planet was a faint ocean blue spotted with the green and brown of land. The day was relatively clear, and the horizon was an actual, slightly curved line between the surface and the cyan of sky above.

In just a handful of days, as marked down in the calendars of old, the Five would appear high in the night sky over there, once the twilight revealed the stars, heralding the beginning of a new era, by the reckoning of his people. He'd read about previous Aligments, how the festivities attracted clans from all over the island as well as from the surface, back when echidnas still lived there. He'd set himself up to learn and consider the philosophy, as one ought to, and once he was done here he'd start on his preparations.

It was one of the oldest holidays of his people, one that dated back to the days long before the Great Flood, long before echidnas had been isolated on the island, just a small, dwindling tribe left of a once numerous and powerful people. A custom from the time when they had been still the warlike people history remembered them as, constantly at quarrels with other tribes, or even within their own ranks. Back when conquest and war had been their ways, and there were enough conflicts to put at rest for the duration of the holiday, for a brief period of peace to honour the beginning of a new era.

Knuckles didn't really understand the mentality of conquest; he was a child of the dwindling tribe, of the last few generations of echidnas hidden away on the Floating Island, and by then the main philosophy had been of preserving, of Guardianship, of safekeeping the island, the Emeralds, the people, too. He knew his history, but that didn't mean he could feel it. He had read the texts, and seen it with his own eyes in Tikal's visions, but the entire philosophy didn't line up with that of more recent times, the hiding and guarding and waiting that was the tone of the more recent writings, and that was after all the philosophy ingrained in Knuckles too, even if he didn't remember being told. It didn't even matter if he remembered who had taught him, or when, because he was sure of his purpose if nothing else.

But, the Alignment had still been celebrated and looked forward to in the few writings left by the generations alive somewhat closer to the time of his hatching, a symbol of hope, too, for that there would be a future for them in this coming cycle.

Months ago, when he'd first thought of the upcoming holiday and what he'd do about it, he'd looked forward to it. Alignments were so rare, it was luck to see one in your lifetime, but now, with the date creeping closer and closer, he was feeling less and less like there was any point in celebrating it.

A few years ago, he might have spent an extra effort on the distant hope that for the most important holiday in the span of centuries, someone would come back for him. Now, he no longer believed that.

But this tradition had been upheld over thousands of years of echidnas living on Angel Island. It wasn't going to die before him.

Knuckles frowned. If he were to say that aloud to anyone, like, to Sonic if he should try and annoy him again, that would sound grim, he supposed. Cynical. But it was the truth, wasn't it?

With a deep breath he pulled himself out of it and returned his attention to his bridge building material. He'd not come up here to wallow in self-pity after all. He still had work to do.

* * *

The desk was in a state of controlled chaos. At least that was what Tails had called it earlier. Sonic, who'd done _actual_ Chaos Control, wasn't entirely convinced as he made his way across the workshop, two plates of food in hands, and took in the scene in front of him.

There was paper scattered all across the desk. Scribbles, notes, printouts of things, flowcharts that did nothing but look confusing. The rightmost corner housed an uneven, leaning tower of books taller than Tails that sat rather precariously close to the edge. One large book lay open in the middle of the desk, taking up most of the space although Tails didn't even seem to be looking at it. The fox was staring at his computer screen, chin resting in his right hand, right elbow atop a pile of paper that was inching closer and closer towards the leaning tower of books.

"Tails."

No reaction. The fox was reading something on his screen, and so absorbed in it he didn't hear Sonic. It wasn't that he merely ignored him; Sonic could easily tell the difference. He knew Tails like, close to forever.

"Tails!"

Sonic shook his head. It was amusing every time again. He leaned past his brother and just put one of the plates down in front of him.

The words had been not enough to rouse Tails, but the movement in his peripheral vision was. He jumped, his elbow pushed the stack of paper the last bit of the way until it met the leaning tower, sending it sliding the critical inches further over the edge to where it tipped out of balance.

Sonic took two lightning fast steps around the chair with Tails in it and shoved the books back onto safe ground. Safe desk. Whatever.

He rounded on his friend in the same second, eyebrows raised. "You need a fence around this thing."

Tails blinked at him. " _What_?"

"A fence." Sonic waved his free hand at the tower, now even more uneven after his shove at it. "So your _controlled chaos_ doesn't fall off the desk."

"Oh." Tails frowned. "Sorry. I was busy. Did you want anything?"

Sonic shrugged. "Not really. Or, yes, kinda. I'm trying to be a responsible roommate."

"Huh?"

"I brought you dinner. It's nine. Unless you ate some of your books, you should be eating something."

Tails' gaze dropped down to the plate in front of him as if he realized only now it was there. "Oh. OH! Is that Paolo's Lasagna?" He looked up. "Did you run two hundred kilometers to pick up dinner again?"

Sonic shrugged. "I can run moderately fast."

Tails laughed. "Understatement, from _you_. I'm impressed."

"You're easy to impress." Sonic grinned, holding out a fork at him. "Here, before it gets cold."

Tails nodded eagerly at that. Sonic pulled over a rolling container to sit on for himself, and a few minutes passed in silence as they devoured the lasagna. Tails actually finished before Sonic, which was a good sign he'd been half starved and had forgotten about it again. Sonic, who spend what felt like half his time being hungry, could never really wrap his mind around the concept that you could forget to _eat_.

"Thanks." Tails smiled.

Sonic swallowed his last bite. "Welcome." He hopped off his improvised seat and instead sat his empty plate down on it. "So, what've we got?" He gestured at Tails' chaotic towers of knowledge.

"Unfortunately, not much, especially not in terms of hard facts." He turned back to his screen, setting his plate down to the side, on top of the paper stack that had nearly felled the leaning tower. Sonic reached around him and took the plate to sit next to his own on the container, safely out of reach. Tails followed his actions and had the decency to grin sheepishly.

Sonic just waved at the screen and books. "If not hard facts, what else we got?"

Tails eyed the book tower. "Mysteries. Ancient riddles. Lots of "we don't really know's". Ruins and relics and cryptic inscriptions from thousands of years ago." He span around in his chair to pluck the topmost book off the leaning tower to flip it open somewhere near the middle. "Here, this is what a lot of Ancient Echidna ruins look like."

Sonic leaned in to get a better look. It was a two page photo, of a jungle. It was mostly green. There were some rock formations in between, pale grey under lots of green. They were straight enough to maybe justify the guess they'd been part of a building once, but it was impossible to tell what kind. "Honestly, if I ran past that, I'd think it's just some rock."

"Good you're not trying to work in archeology." Tails grinned. "But really," he studied the picture, "that's what most sites that are thought to be former Echidna cities or temples or settlements look like." He flipped a couple pages, stopping at another image, this time showing a pyramid-shaped building sitting on a clearing, with jungle in the background, but only partly overgrown. "This is what the best preserved sites look like, as in Mystic Ruins. This was a temple once. Sites in this good condition are extremely rare." He looked up at Sonic. "This one was a sun temple, or that's what scientists think today. The Echidnas really did astronomy. This temple was build so it aligns with the solstices and equinoxes. The sun would always set in specific spots on those days. There's another temple that has a stairway build to reflect the orbits of different planets. They were really great at astronomy. They knew the planet is round, they understood the differences between planets and stars, they tracked the returns of comets and correctly calculated their return. All sorts of cool things, especially considering the time period."

Sonic nodded. "So you did find out something," he noticed.

Tails frowned. "Yeah. Sort of. But that's mostly where it stops. I couldn't find anything about holidays they celebrated. Or what sorts of things they observed in details. I know they studied the sky, but I know nothing about what it means, and that would be the relevant part. What kind of holiday is this? How would you celebrate it? Should we bring gifts? How long does it last? Why is this celestial event a special event to their culture?" He waved at his books. " _I don't know_. It's like I spend days reading all of this and it was super interesting, but I don't know anything for real."

"Huh." Sonic stared. He understood what points Tails was making, maybe better in this specific case than at other times when the fox got frustrated in his pursuit of knowledge that often ended up not really satisfying his curiosity. But this here, this was personal. "It's a lot of paperwork for "you don't know anything"," he said carefully.

Tails sighed, looked back at the temple picture. "It's not nothing exactly. It's just… The Echidnas were one of Mobius' first cultures that grew advanced enough to develop architecture that allowed building large structures like temples and cities like this, to do math, develop writing. They settled in a large area, for thousands of years. Relics and artwork have been found nearly everywhere on Mobius, but we don't know for sure if they are always a sign that Echidnas lived in this area, or if they traded with other cultures living there. We know they were a warlike people that quickly gained influence over a large territory and remained probably the dominant culture on Mobius for a long time."

Sonic nodded. "And then they disappeared." It wasn't that Tails was telling him all new things here; they'd done their first Echidna research after running into Knuckles the first time, and then again after Chaos flooded Station Square and Tikal had dropped them into visions of the past.

Tails nodded back. "Yes, about four thousand years ago. Some of their cities have been found in a state that suggests they were destroyed very quickly. Archeologists thought it might have been a natural catastrophe, but by now we know it was Perfect Chaos who nearly wiped them out after Pachacamac tried to take the Emeralds." He looked back at the book. "We know that the survivors must've taken Angel Island to the skies and that's why they vanished from the surface, but what remains down here and has been studied is thousands of years old. Even things that were not destroyed by Chaos have been weathered by time. We don't actually know that much about what they lived like. Or what holidays they upheld."

"You know, we could just ask Knuckles," Sonic noticed softly. He knew Tails wanted to be prepared, but if he wanted knowledge, they had the best source right there, and Knuckles would probably appreciate being asked. He was proud of his heritage; surely he wouldn't be mad if Tails expressed interest in some of his culture's inner workings.

"I know." Tails shrugged, fiddling with the book. "I just… I don't know. Looking at all this, at all this stuff we don't know, all the mysteries… I want to… I would really like to know, but I don't want to be insensitive." The blue gaze flicked up to meet Sonic's. "He's the last. I _know_ he's sad about that. What if… what if I ask things and it just upsets him? Just drives home that there's nobody else left, that all of us down here don't even really know anything about his lost people anymore? That before long the bit we can guess will be forgotten, too? It's making _me_ sad, Sonic. What will it do to Knuckles?"

Sonic sighed, watching Tails' drooping ears. "I don't know." He reached out to rest a hand on Tails' shoulder. "But I know other things."

Tails looked up at him.

"Both of us don't have family. We don't really know where _you_ come from, because you were so tiny when I found you. We don't know which culture you belong to, by heritage I mean, or if your relatives are still there somewhere, or if you're the last of _your_ kind, too. Do we?"

The fox frowned. "No, but that's not –"

"Not the same?" Sonic shook his head. "No, it's not. And that's not what I mean. Does it matter, if you're the last of your kind, your family, from your village, wherever that might've been? Does it make you lonely that you don't know?"

Tails blinked. "No." A tentative smile appeared on his muzzle. "Because I'm not alone. I haven't been alone since I met you."

Sonic squeezed his shoulder. "Yeah. And I haven't been alone since you little two-tailed furball started following me everywhere."

"Hey!" Tails frowned in only half serious indignation.

Sonic grinned. "What I'm trying to say here… We don't need to know a lot about whatever it is Knux' people celebrate there. We don't need to be Echidna culture experts. We just need to be _there_ , because that's what family is for."

Tails nodded, snapped close his book, and smiled back at him for real now.


	3. Uninvited Guests

The orange light of dawn filtered into the cave that Knuckles had build into a cozy shelter when the echidna woke from sleep. He rolled over, groaned, closed his eyes again. He'd _meant_ to sleep in today. It was a holiday, and he was going to stay up late into the night, but after a few minutes it was clear he wasn't going to doze off again. He felt restless. Still curled up under the covers, he sensed out for the Master Emerald's energy. The temple was only a few minutes of walking away, and the energy was close and bright here. It was calm, too. Undisturbed and secure.

Knuckles sighed, rolling onto his back and blinking into the early morning's light coming in through the small window near the ceiling. He'd made it himself, sealed a large slab of clear quartz into the wall to keep the weather out but let the light in. Through it, he could catch a blurry glimpse of sky, and what he could see was a bright cyan promising a fair day ahead. That was something at least.

He pushed back the covers and climbed out of bed, taking in the mess he'd made of the room yesterday. The table held several bowls of preparations for paint, for murals or writing on stone as well as body paint, including a type that looked whitish now, but contained enough dust gathered from the crystal walls in Lava Reef's caves to glow a bluish green in reaction to the Master Emerald's field. It would be most visible in the dark of night. It had felt pointless in a way, because nobody else was here to see it, but he would not welcome the new cycle without looking the part.

Next to the bowls of paint sat a box filled with feathers, pearls and bands, and next to those was a still unrolled scroll with last night's reading. Old philosophy, potentially prophetic, and unfortunately rather cryptic. It contained enlightening advice to mind when entering a new cycle, such as "you may need to sacrifice something you thought of worth in order to save something that is more valuable". That was one of the last lines Knuckles had read yesterday, late at night, sitting next to his fireplace for light. It wasn't that none of it made any sense at all. He knew it was something about change, about adapting, about changing values, but he wasn't a philosopher by nature. He was a practical echidna. Stuff like that was just hard to wrap his head around properly, and it wasn't like anyone was there to teach him. Back in the day, a young echidna would have teachers and mentors explaining this sort of thing. As it was, he could tell it was supposed to be important, but that didn't mean that it made much sense to him.

He picked up the scroll, tidy, ancient glyphs on ancient, fragile parchment, and rolled it back up to set aside gently. It wasn't the scroll's fault he didn't really understand it.

After a quick breakfast, Knuckles set up his mirror. It wasn't completely flat and things got distorted towards the edges, but it worked well enough, considering he'd made it from a part of a broken Eggman robot. Mirroring materials were nearly nonexistent in nature and he didn't have the facilities to create anything like it himself. He studied his reflection. Much clearer an image than the surface of a pond in any case.

He spent nearly an hour braiding feathers and bands into his quills in the traditional way and painting the old patterns onto his brow, sweeping lines of whitish paint. He finished with circles around his dreadlocks near the top and solid bright white quill tips, then picked up the silver bracelets and pulled one around each upper arm. They were as ancient as most of the relics on the island, but he'd polished them back to near perfection yesterday. Now, they gleamed in the morning sunlight, the silver metal shining nearly as white as the body paint markings.

Knuckles studied his reflection, and tried a smile at himself. The echidna in the mirror really looked like today was a big day. Maybe looks should count for something?

He frowned at his reflection. He'd really looked forward to today. He'd gathered the materials for the paint, he'd planned out the foods he was going to indulge in, he'd planned out his day, there'd been dozens of things he'd wanted to do, he'd spent weeks trying to find the best spot on the island to view the Five peel out of the twilight. But those last few days… He didn't really know why he bothered anymore. In a way, it seemed pointless. There was no-one here.

But he couldn't change that, and he'd been here by himself for all this time. It shouldn't matter.

He shook his head, gathered up the bowls of wall paint. In honour of previous Alignments, it had been tradition to paint a mural or at least write down an inscription, symbolic, prophetic or in some other way commemorating this great cosmic event. Knuckles was no scribe, but he _could_ write, if not really paint well. Maybe he ought to try later. It wasn't that anyone was there to complain if his glyphs were untidy or any drawing he tried ended up crooked. That was, if he could even make up his mind what he wanted to set out as something symbolic or at least important for a whole new cycle.

Leaving the cave, he took one of the footpaths towards the hills and down to the nearest entrance to the island's underground tunnels. It would lead him right down into the mountain, to where the tunnels passed between Hydrocity and the Hidden Palace, to where the walls held several murals and important writings already. If he were to create an image, it should be there.

For now though, he left the bowls of paint at the entrance and slowly made his way back towards the Emerald shrine. He took his time getting there. He was in no rush, walking around would maybe clear his head. The morning was already several hours old when he finally climbed the stairs and settled down on the stone ground of the altar's platform, the Master Emerald a solid warm glow in his back.

It had no actual connection to the event or festivities, but they asked for contemplation or meditation, and the Emerald was Knuckles' center, his focus. If he was trying for the required state of mind, this place was better than any other.

He took a slow breath, deeply in and gradually out, leaned his head down until his long quills fell all around his face, partly blocking out the bright summer sun, and listened to the hum and tingle of the Master's power just a few steps behind him. Save, stable, contented.

On the long run, could it stay that way? It was one of Knuckles' primary concerns, probably it was natural it would be the first to come to mind if he sat down specifically to think about the bigger picture, as was part of the ancient tradition to do.

For now, he could keep it safe. In the last couple of years, several attacks on the Emerald had been made, it had been lost, too, but it had always been retrieved and restored. Sometimes by Knuckles' own work, sometimes, that first time even, it had been Sonic who'd done it, who'd brought it back, and wanted nothing at all in return.

Knuckles had never expected any sort of assistance or backup or support in his guardianship. That was, historically, a situation without precedent. He was the only echidna on the island, the last of his people, and thus also the first to entirely handle the burden and responsibility of guarding the most drastically powerful and dangerous object in the world entirely by himself. In the old days, there had been warriors in the cities around the temple, the Guardians' family, too, people to help with things big and small in daily life and in battle, but as the last one, Knuckles had never had that safety net to rely on.

On the contrary, he was so used to work by himself that other people tended to make him more nervous than anything helpful. Trust didn't come easily, not after that first disaster of trusting _Eggman_ of all people, and maybe he should have made more steps towards Sonic after he'd saved the Master Emerald, but he had not, and it had been easier, quicker to distrust him again than to consider him a friend or just an ally, at least before Perfect Chaos.

It wasn't the only misunderstanding on his behalf, and maybe, Knuckles mused, maybe he should make an effort in this upcoming cycle to not repeat the same old mistakes. He knew they were his friends, a Guardian was allowed to have them, too...

What didn't stop the Emerald from being endangered, there was a reason it always needed a Guardian, and sometimes Knuckles was terrified what would happen to it after his death. In the cosmic line of things, it didn't even matter if he met his end in battle, to protect the Emerald, or if he got to live out his years until he was old and grey. His lifetime was just a blip on the endless stream of time, and there would be no one to follow in his footsteps. There were no echidnas left. Part of Knuckles still, kind of, silently hoped and wished the old stories were true, that some of them had gone to the stars, and would some day return.

If not, would the Emerald choose a Guardian from another race? Chaos powers were nothing unique to his people, perhaps another Guardian could be found. Perhaps, one day, that would be his duty, too.

Behind him, the Emerald pulsed up, sending a gentle wash and tingle of Chaos down his spine. Knuckles blinked his eyes open in surprise. There was a presence, announced now in the Emerald's energy, but it was no danger, no urgency. Not the instant jolt of panic that would startle Knuckles when a stranger, possibly an enemy, entered the Emerald's wide field. This was more a calm notion, familiar.

Still, there went his peace and quiet for contemplation of past and future. Knuckles climbed to his feet with a sigh. He should have known Sonic wouldn't give up so easily. The hedgehog was most persistent when he wanted to drag someone into his ideas.

By the time Knuckles had descended the stairs and crossed out of the circle of pillars, he could clearly hear the engine of his friends' biplane, and after another moment of waiting, he could see it, too. Red paint, right now. Tails must've repainted it again; last time Knuckles had seen it, it had been blue.

He liked the bright red better.

The biplane dived down, barely missing the treetops of the surrounding forest, before coming to land on the meadow the red echidna still stood on.

Sonic perched atop the wings as usual, waving eagerly at Knuckles as the biplane rolled past his position and came to a hold. Tails was quick to silence the engine, turning back to wave at Knuckles as well.

The Guardian settled for a nod in greeting.

Sonic was already off the plane and across the field of grass in a second, a blur of blue and a sharp gust of wind. Then he was in front of Knuckles, wearing a grin on his face. "Hi there! You doing well?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I suppose. I was-" He was about to explain they were interrupting, and what were they even doing here, surely they'd have a celebration to attend somewhere down on the surface, but Sonic cut him off.

"Hey, we thought you'd be busy! You _said_ you'd be busy." The hedgehog folded his arms.

"I _was_ busy, Sonic," Knuckles grumbled, mirroring the crossed arms. "Until _someone_ came and interrupted me..." He sighed. "What do you want, Sonic? I'm not going to come along on a trip with you, I told you that, and in case you finally caught up to the date, I also don't intend to come with you for any festival on the surface. I'm gonna celebrate here, okay?"

Sonic took back a step, raising his hands at him, palms out flat. "Whoa, easy. We're not here to drag you anywhere, or to interrupt. Tell him, Tails." The latter was spoken to the little fox who had finished parking and powering off his plane and now came up to Sonic's side.

Apparently Tails had heard enough of the exchange to figure out what was going on, because he smiled and nodded at Knuckles. "We're really not trying to talk you into anything, or drag you anywhere, as you put it. When we suggested the trip, we didn't know it was an important date to you."

Knuckles stared at him. Tails was the smartest person he knew, for the fox to say he didn't know something as _fundamental_ as when the Alignment announced the beginning of the new cycle...

"I don't even know what you said this time, but I think you already lost him, Tails, from the face he's making. You didn't even need science talk, how do you do it?" Sonic was shaking his head and smiling.

"You... _didn't know_?" Knuckles stared, trying unsuccessfully to stop himself from making whatever face Sonic found amusing.

"No. You really confused us when you told me there was an event." Sonic was still smiling, but no longer mockingly so, more fondly, like he'd occasionally smile at Tails, too.

"You see, I don't know if it was in the past, maybe way back when the Old Echidnas were the prominent culture on Mobius at large, but this "Alignment" as you call it isn't a celebration we have on the surface today."

The echidna stared at Tails. "No?" It was the most important calendaric event in centuries!

Tails empathically shook his head. "No. You see, all cultures have unique traditions."

"I know that." Knuckles went back to folding his arms.

"And this one is uniquely Echidnaen." Tails shrugged. "It took us a while to figure that out, but we thought..."

"We thought no celebration is made to be held alone. We dragged you into some of _our_ celebrations, and so we thought we'd come up and celebrate with you, whatever it is." Sonic smiled.

"If you want us." Tails wasn't outright smiling; he was looking timid enough that Knuckles was sure he'd expect rejection.

The truth was, Knuckles had been fully prepared to celebrate in whatever capacity he was able on his own, simply because there was no-one else here. But the truth was also that it was a community celebration by tradition, an event that used to reunite clans that lived far apart, that brought family and friends together and that was put down in the records of history as a time to forget, even if only temporarily, the conflicts between rivalling groups.

Part of him wanted to say no, wanted to allow himself to go back to wallowing some more in petty self-pity. Another part almost desperately wanted them to stay so he couldn't go back there. He wasn't sure which was the weaker part. Did it even matter?

His confused silence lasted a moment too long for Sonic and the hedgehog shrugged at him. "Unless we're wrong and your folks are the bunch for solitary confinement during holidays and our presence only interrupts your sitting under the Emerald in silence." He gestured sloppily towards the shrine, but the tone wasn't all mocking, there was a question there, too, and something that sounded almost like acceptance? It was probably testament to an open-mindedness the hedgehog didn't get enough credit for if he was going to allow the idea that someone would want to spend a holiday in silent, depressed contemplation... It seemed unimaginable Sonic himself could ever do that sort of thing.

But the expectant look was still on him. "No," Knuckles finally said. "It's not solitary. There used to be people coming from everywhere, back to celebrate with their clans. There were... quiet activities, but also dancing and singing." He looked between his friends, who were smiling now, and shrugged, suddenly feeling lost and desolate again at the thought of the songs of old, forever forgotten by time. "But I don't know any of the songs. I never heard anyone play them, or sing them..."

Tails was biting his lip, thoughtful and as unprepared for Knuckles' downtrodden mood as he was himself, but Sonic shook his head, stubborn smile still plastered to his lips. "Well, it's good we came up then, 'cause we can party, sing and dance with the best of them," he announced, drawing one arm around Tails and slapping at Knuckles' shoulder with his free hand, and when he continued it was with the rare gravity and utter conviction you normally only heard in his voice when the world was coming to an end around them. "We'll manage. I promise."

Somehow, all Knuckles could do was nod.


	4. Ceremonial Mastery on Island Space Ships

They were already walking away when Knuckles remembered what he would have done after his interrupted meditation had his friends not arrived to distract him and he stopped in his tracks, causing Sonic behind him in file to almost walk into him, only to step around him with namesake speed and a sound of surprise, which in turn led to Tails walking into Knuckles instead.

"Hey! What's up?!"

From at his side, Sonic tilted his head at the echidna. "Yeah, what's now?"

"I forgot something. Sorry. I won't be long, but there's something I gotta do." When he turned back to the temple, Sonic, arms crossed, exchanged a look with Tails, who shrugged at him, then both of them trailed after Knuckles.

Seeing him head back into the temple, Sonic led out a soft chuckle. "What's up with the shiny rock? I'm sure you can leave it alone for a bit." It didn't sound quite as mocking as the words were made out to sound, there was a bit of curiosity there, too.

Distantly Knuckles realized this time it was his friends who didn't know what to expect, and he decided he wasn't going to spoil all surprises by explaining his every move when it wasn't necessary.

"You'll see later." He smiled at Tails. "You are going to like it." The fox raised a puzzled brow, and Knuckles grinned and turned to Sonic. "Not sure about you." He shrugged. "Wait here."

He left the others at the base of the stairs, not looking back to see if they stayed or followed. Partly because he didn't want to make it look like he didn't trust them to stick to a simple request such as this, partly because he didn't need look when here, right at the shrine, so very close to the Emerald, the energy was bright and rich in the ground and Sonic in particular was such a vibrant flicker of disturbance in the Master's field.

They did stay where he'd left them, though, and Knuckles made up the stairs on his own. He stopped next to the Great Emerald, turned once on the spot, trailing his look over the treetops around the clearing, over the hills and the volcano that rose in the island's center back round over forests and distant clouds behind it, then he reached out a hand to brush over the Master Emerald with the tips of his fingers, ghosting over the smooth surface before resting his palm flat against it.

He didn't look for the bright green light, instead he sought the sun already quite high in the sky above even while he slowly dropped to one knee, laying his second hand down against the stone ground. He took a breath, deep and calm and clear, and reached out.

The Emerald power sang under his hands, sharp and crisp, but serene and at ease. Knuckles listened, felt, watched, twisting the energy around himself and pulled, not for battle or strength, but for direction.

The energy responded all too easily, curling and shaping in his grasp, and he trailed its path, sinking it deep into the island below. The ground tingled, shifted, rose too slowly and turned too gently to be felt with anything other than that vague sense of _chaos_.

He turned back to the sun, guessing its path along the sky as good as he could, pulled at the energy again, lining it up, then he watched it, waited for it to settle into the new dynamic, then he let go, slowly, gently. No urgency here this time. He watched another moment to know it was stable, then he pulled back and stood.

His steps were light and easy when he made his way back down the stairs, the echo of Emerald power vibrantly singing under his feet.

Sonic and Tails were watching him, curious and questioning. "What was that about, huh?", the hedgehog asked.

"What did you do?" Tails spoke almost at the same time. "Something wrong?"

Knuckles grinned. It came easy now, when he was still light with the echo of the calm energy under his hands. "Nothing wrong, don't worry."

"Then what's with the magic tricks?" Sonic gestured up at the altar. "You don't do glowing and blinking lights for the show now, do you?"

"True. You'll see later."

"Is it a secret?" Tails' large ears were perked and his double tails twirled behind his back in a way that told Knuckles he was thinking hard.

Sonic grinned suddenly. "Since when isn't _anything_ shiny rock a secret?"

Knuckles smirked and turned to leave. "Exactly. And it's not a shiny rock, hedgehog."

"Aww, Knuckles. Come on, tell me. It's party day! No secrets!" Now Sonic was pouting as he realised he was spot on and Knuckles had no intention whatsoever to inform them about what he'd done.

The echidna grinned to himself. The _secret_ would annoy the impatient hedgehog all day. "No."

* * *

"So, tell us about this Alignment. What's it about?" Sonic, again, sounded genuinely curious.

"We figured it's maybe a bit like a new year, just... Bigger? More important?" Tails was watching him expectantly.

Knuckles stopped walking next to a partly overgrown wall that stood tall enough still to sit on, and that's what he did while he mulled the description over. "That's close, I suppose," he mused then. "The cycles, or periods, or eras, maybe, between two Alignments can be very long. That's why it's the most important cycle. Our calendar knows many different cycles. Short ones, like the time between two full moons. Seasons, traditionally marked by the solstices and equinoxes. A year is made up of all seasons, the seasons are made up of several moon phases."

Tails had sat down next to him. "This is similar to our calendar counting weeks, months and years."

Knuckles nodded. It was weird having to explain something he'd taken for granted. "Other cycles are longer, or of varying lengths. The Haab', is made up of eighteen months, each of which has 20 days. At the end of the year there are five additional days, called the "unlucky days". The Tzolk'in is a cycle of 260 days." Looking at his friends revealed Tails was wearing a concentrated frown and Sonic looked like when he'd encountered something new and was trying to figure out what to do about it. "You don't have things like that?"

"No." Sonic shrugged lightly. "Way to make it complicated."

Knuckles was about to rebuke, it wasn't actually very complicated, but it was Tails who spoke up first.

"Well, we have other time periods we keep track of. Even much longer than a few months. Like, decades." He flicked his ears thoughtfully. "People often think of a decade as a distinct time period, and the beginning of a new one is sometimes considered more special than a normal new year, too."

Sonic's head was tilted in thought now. "True," he said. "Not so weird then."

Tails looked between the other two. "Technically, we have even longer time periods we keep track of. Centuries."

Sonic nodded, turning back to Knuckles. "Is that what it is, maybe?"

"The start of a new century? Or, a millennium?" Tails' double tails were spinning excitedly behind his back.

The red echidna mulled the term over for a moment. Close enough, perhaps, so he nodded. "Something like that."

"And your millenniums are based on events in the sky. That's kinda cool, you know." Knuckles wasn't yet sure if Sonic actually meant that when the hedgehog turned to Tails, a suddenly thoughtful expression on his face. "What are _our_ millenniums and other things based on?"

"Math." Tails shrugged. "Well, millenniums, centuries and decades are. Someone once started counting, and now when there's a "round" number of years elapsed, we call it a decade, or a century. Our months are based on what used to be lunar phases in an ancient calendar, but it was changed around over time and they added days and months, and it no longer fits. The only thing that's still based on something observed in nature is the length of year. And day, obviously."

Sonic grinned. "I didn't think I'd say it, but your thing sounds less random than that, Knux."

Knuckles still wasn't sure if it was meant as a compliment or not, but before he could decide, Tails was looking at him with that curious frown again.

"Do you celebrate other celestial events? Eclipses?"

"Eclipses are considered bad omens in the old writings. They're days you're told to not start anything important and stay on your guard." Knuckles wasn't sure if he believed in that; he'd seen a few eclipses of moon and sun and all the terrible things that had happened to him had never happened on one such day.

Sonic was looking at him weird, and Knuckles prepared to defend himself, but Tails obviously still had questions to distract them with.

"What about conjunctions, then?"

Knuckles blinked. "What?"

"Conjunctions," Tails repeated. "Alignments of two planets, you would probably call it?"

"Ah." Knuckles smiled. "Yes. Sort of. It's not an important event like this. They're more like..." He shrugged, fumbling for a word in his friends' language. "Slightly special days?"

"Holidays?", Sonic suggested.

Knuckles shrugged again. "Maybe?"

Sonic suddenly frowned. "Are we underdressed?"

"What?"

"It's a holiday." The hedgehog's hand waved at Knuckles' spines, at the paint and the feathers and pearls playing in the gentle wind. "You dressed up, and we're all... average looking here. Should we have thought of wearing something special?"

Knuckles blinked at his friend. Yes, he'd prepared a more festive look for himself, but that had been before he'd known he'd have visitors, and now he actually was feeling weird about it. It wasn't anything like surface fashion, wouldn't he look _really_ weird to Sonic and Tails? But the hedgehog did look sincere... Knuckles shrugged. "You didn't know. I... I almost didn't bother wearing anything myself anyway."

Sonic and Tails exchanged a stricken look that implied they understood the reasoning for Knuckles' hesitation. Tails' large ears were curving backwards, but it was Sonic who brushed it off and smiled suddenly again. "Well, it's good you did, it's absolutely more festive. Got some more feathers? Maybe we can make ourselves more presentable, too."

"It doesn't look... weird to you? You never wear anything like it..." Coming to think of it, did Sonic even have anything like formal wear for his own culture? It seemed unimaginable. Knuckles couldn't picture him in anything but running shoes.

But Sonic shrugged. "Nah. You forget how much we travel. We see all sorts of traditional clothing from all over the world." He studied the feathers. "You know, this sorta even reminds me of a few other things I've seen."

For all his lack of tact on most occasions, Knuckles suddenly thought that Sonic was right, and he'd not taken into consideration that while Sonic habitually made fun of all sorts of things, he sure did get around a lot, making friends left and right. He had to be an expert of dealing with unfamiliar cultures... Maybe that was why Sonic and Tails always seemed to find it easier dealing with him than the other way around? So far they were taking everything unfamiliar in stride and with a startling enthusiasm. Maybe it was practice and exposure as much as their nature?

"So, do you?" Sonic's words startled him out his thoughts.

"What?"

Sonic grinned, but it was Tails who answered. Also the little fox was back to looking enthusiastic again. "Have more feathers? I want a cool feather crown!"

The old people had worn things that would probably fit that description, but... "Actually, feather crowns are kinda for ceremonial masters and high dignitaries."

Sonic laughed. "Well Tails, you better work on your ceremonial mastery then."

But Tails wasn't laughing; he was studying Knuckles with a thoughtful frown. "Aren't you?"

The echidna blinked. "What?"

"Someone of high dignitary position. You're the _Guardian_. Isn't that important?"

Knuckles stared. He'd not thought to really consider it in much detail, but yes, he was "High Guardian" in the old language, and it had been a well respected position. "It is."

Sonic gestured. "Maybe you should be wearing the feather crown then." There was a spark of mischief in the hedgehog's eyes. "I thought _we_ were underdressed, but apparently _you_ are, too."

Should he point out that he'd barely found the motivation to do just this little decoration for his spines, that it had seemed pointless, even if he'd consider himself important enough to wear a crown? "There used to be many different versions to "dress up", as you'd call it, I think it was really complex and all sorts of little things were important… but all of that was when there still -" Knuckles found himself faltering over saying it out loud, but set his jaw and soldiered on. It was nothing new after all. Nothing they didn't know already, for a long time. "-when there were still other echidnas living on the island." He stared down at his feet. Not new or not, suddenly, the feeling of abandonment was back in full force.

There was moment of silence, his low of mood probably obvious to his guests.

"You have no idea where they could have gone, do you?" It was Tails who broke the silence, and when Knuckles looked up at him, Tails was watching him, all innocent, gentle and concerned blue eyes.

He might have let himself snap and shout at Sonic for a question like this, allowed some of the sense of helplessness and loss to translate into the far more easily handled anger, but he couldn't do that to the little fox.

"No." Without anger to clutch to, the admission felt heavier on his lips. It wasn't new, whatever had happened to make him the last one here had happened years ago, and it served no purpose to dwell on it. Normally, he tried to avoid it, because it didn't achieve anything anyway. But Tails was looking all stricken and sad on his behalf, and it wasn't an expression he could stand seeing. "There are… legends," he said, clutching to a sentiment, to a hope from his own childhood. If it had served him, maybe it would do for Tails as well? "Legends that say some of our people have gone to the stars." Inadvertently, he felt his gaze flick up to the sky, bright blue with the near midday sun. "Maybe to another planet. When I was small, I used to look up to the stars and wonder if one of them was looking back at me."

Tails didn't say anything, and when Knuckles looked back down, the blue eyes were still wide and unsmiling. Sonic was smiling, but not in the way that would reach his eyes.

Still, it was the blue hedgehog to break the next bout of heavy silence. "You know, maybe they are. Space is huge. Plenty of space for planets to live on, or for something cool and insane like an island floating through space like a giant space ship."

Tails gave an incredulous chuckle. " _Giant island space ship_."

Sonic shrugged. "Hey, why not? Apparently thousands of years ago, they somehow convinced _this_ island to float. Wouldn't it make sense by now they can take their islands to space?"

"Well... Now that you say it..." Tails blinked. "Maybe it's possible? You would have to solve the atmosphere problem, so you don't lose all your air to space, and have a system large enough to be fully autarkic, but with technology advances, it could be feasible? Angel Island isn't autarkic, its atmosphere interacts closely with the surrounding atmosphere of the planet at large, but then again, autarky isn't required here and would bring no benefits."

Knuckles frowned. "What?"

Sonic was grinning fondly, the red echidna wasn't sure if at him or at Tails. "I'm not so sure, but I guess Tails thinks with some newer technology, we can turn your island into a space ship."

"No, I just said that -" Tails cut himself off, but he was smiling now, too. "I just mean that it's not impossible. Your people had some really advanced technology, in particular for their time. This island, or something like Sky Sanctuary, this stuff seems like it shouldn't even be doable. But it was done, and most of it is still here. That at some point between the creation of the Floating Island and right now some of your people would've been capable of space travel doesn't seem that far fetched to me."

Sonic smiled. "See, even our resident genius thinks they could still be out there." He gestured up at the sky. "You know, maybe they're looking at us right now and are quite disappointed because they expected a cool party and all we're doing is sitting around on an old wall moping."

"I'm not moping, hedgehog," Knuckles grumbled, pushing up off the wall.

The blue hedgehog was still grinning, and the Guardian belatedly realised that Sonic was probably trying to make him get up, but he couldn't find it in himself to be mad at being manipulated. "If you're not moping," his friend continued, "then you better get round to explaining some awesome traditional party stuff to us so we can get started and give everyone up there so good a show they're going to regret not coming to attend."

It was said with such vigor and what sounded like spite on Knuckles' behalf that also the echidna suddenly found a grin on his face, and anew motivation to actually do something to celebrate at all. "Alright." If Sonic could do spite, so could he.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, check out this [amazing picture](https://www.deviantart.com/micazee/art/A-Rich-History-856520471) of the trio discussing history/moping on an ancient wall, by   
> [micazee](https://www.deviantart.com/micazee)! Thank you so much!


	5. Worthy of History

Knuckles decided to lead his guests underground. He'd meant to take a tour of the tunnels, view the murals and writings, maybe even add something of his own, and it didn't seem a bad place to start, because he had no idea what he was actually going to do with _guests_ today. He was beginning to really appreciate their presence, but that didn't know he knew how to best deal with it.

He picked up a torch at the entrance, and Tails turned out to carry a flashlight. Sonic was handed the box with the paint bowls and brushes, which he frowned at, but to Knuckles' surprise he didn't comment.

They had gotten no further than a dozen steps down into the dark tunnel that opened behind a door hidden by a curtain of ivy when Tails gave a surprised, excited little shout. "You are glowing!"

Knuckles stopped, freshly lighted torch in hand and squinted at his own quills, or at least at the ones next to his face because those were the only ones he could see. As expected, here in the dim light, the body paint shone a soft green, pulsating gently in brightness with the ebb and flow of the Master Emerald's power through the island. "Yes?"

"You have glow in the dark body paint." Sonic was shaking his head, in disbelief or amusement or both, Knuckles wasn't sure.

"Yes. That a problem?"

Sonic shook his head. "No, it's cool. Stop being so sensitive."

"I'm not-"

Tails interrupted Knuckles' protest, pointing at his spines and waving his flashlight at him. "This isn't phosphorescent light. It's changing brightness. What is it?"

"Sure it changes; it glows in reaction to the Master Emerald's energy field."

Tails stared. Blinked. "You have... Chaos luminosity. In paint."

Knuckles shrugged. "Sure." He frowned at his friend. "You don't?" It wasn't unusual on the island; there were several murals painted with Chaos radiant paint, and the elements used in producing it lined the walls and ceiling of quite a few underground tunnels, lighting the eternal night in the island's underground zones. What did Tails think caused the light down there?

"No." Tails stretched out a finger as if to grab at Knuckles' spines, then thought better of it. "This is so cool. Can we get some, too? It'll be fun if all of us glow tonight when we're waiting for the Alignment outside."

It was still hard to wrap his mind around the idea that they wanted to stay into the night.

"Maybe he used up all his paint and feathers and we'll have to look like no-one invited us. Knux?" Sonic was grinning, the playful teasing grin that made Knuckles skip on pointing out truthfully that nobody had invited them indeed. He felt bad about that now, because they were making it very clear they wanted to be here and partake, and he had no idea how to deal with that.

But, Sonic was grinning that playful grin, and Knuckles kept his thoughts to himself. "I still have paint, and feathers," he said instead.

It was the right thing to say, because Tails smiled at hearing it and Sonic clapped Knuckles along the shoulder. "We're holding you up to that."

Still kind of dumbfounded, Knuckles nodded, and made a mental note to take them back to his house before sunset at least. But those were plans for a later time, and for now the echidna led his friends down into the labyrinth of catacombs and tunnels, not towards the Hidden Palace, but instead to a tract where various murals and writings could be found on the walls.

They passed the one with Sonic and Eggman and the Master Emerald, a couple murals showing historical events from long ago, in various shades of fade, then a somewhat abstract Perfect Chaos mural that Knuckles himself had only recognized as such after the whole catastrophe took place and he'd returned to the island. Like the Super Sonic mural, a prophesy wasn't necessarily useful when it came around, but was there to mock you with its insight in retrospective.

Tails had studied the murals with interest as they passed them, but remained mostly silent. It was Sonic who finally came back to asking Knuckles for his reasons to bring them down here, and his plans for what they should do now.

"Well, we could try and... paint something. That's one of the most lasting traditions surrounding the ending of a cycle and the beginning of a new one, but, I... I can't paint well." Knuckles shrugged. He'd been down this train of thought, but there was a different quality to it now that he had guests for the occasion.

But Sonic and Tails looked interested. "I can do fine blue prints," the little fox noticed.

Sonic elbowed him. "I kinda think that's not the art style favoured in murals."

"Style changed quite a bit over the centuries." Knuckles vaguely waved back down the corridor, where they'd just passed a handful of examples of that change in style throughout the centuries. "Some of the Old People's art is... abstract."

Sonic grinned. "We'll do whatever stickfigures we can manage and call it our style then."

Knuckles frowned, again unsure if he was being made fun of or if Sonic was trying to be friendly or if the hedgehog actually enjoyed his participation.

Tails interrupted Knuckles' train of thought before he could come to any meaningful conclusion. "So, where do we paint something?"

"It used to be customary to repaint a mural, often by drawing over an old one that was no longer relevant or symbolic for the new cycle."

Tails nodded thoughtfully. "To replace the old symbol with something new."

Knuckles nodded back. "Yes." He shot a look over at Sonic. "Sometimes a prophecy would be painted, but not always. Recent events, too, if they were the cause of change that was expected to last."

"The one with me as Super Sonic fighting Eggman over the Master Emerald, that was one of the prophetic ones?" Sonic's head was tilted in thought.

"Yes, painted about four thousand years ago."

Sonic shook his head. "It's kind of hard to believe..."

Knuckles frowned at him. "I didn't ask you to believe anything," he gave back, sharper than intended and surprised at the sudden feeling of having to defend himself.

But Sonic was smiling. "Hey, easy, I wasn't criticising, it just really is kind of... fascinating, that someone would know thousands of years ago that I would be here, and Eggman, and you, and what we would do."

"I wonder if your people were time travellers or something, if they maybe had seen the future," Tails put in, ears perked and tails twirling agitatedly as they did when he was thinking hard.

"There are legends of Chaos Sight," Knuckles noticed, temper calmed again as he thought back to what he'd read about the old times. "About clairvoyance using the Emerald powers of Life and Truth. It is said the Chaos Emeralds exist outside of time, in a way, and the legends say there used to be seers that could draw on this part of the Chaos forces as other Chaos Controllers could use them to sustain them in a fight, or how Chaos Healers used to be able to call them up to cure the sick and injured." He shook his head, pulled his thoughts back to the present. It was long gone. The past.

When he focused back on his friends, he found Tails looking at him with wide eyes, and even Sonic looked pensive.

"Do you think there still are people out there like this?", Tails asked quietly.

"There are several Chaos Controllers around after all," Sonic remarked.

"Chaos skills of any kind are rare." Knuckles shrugged. Strong, developed powers were even more so. Latent skills, never properly learned and used, probably more widespread. "Maybe. I know only of a handful of mentions since the beginning of the very first cycle."

Tails thoughtfully looked at him. "The first cycle? That was long ago?"

"Very. Legends say the first circle began with the beginning of time, with the Mysterious Beyond, which created the world as we know it."

"The Mysterious Beyond? I thought the Echidnas had several gods," Sonic threw in. Casually. Tone clearly as non-judgmental as he could do. Curious, perhaps.

"We do," Knuckles noticed. "Though how many probably depends on your definition of 'god'."

Sonic frowned. "There is a definition?"

Tails was studying Knuckles and Sonic, contemplative himself. "There isn't."

Knuckles smiled. It was unfamiliar to agree with Tails, on something conceptual. Whenever they agreed, it was usually over which mad stunt not to try out. Which Sonic tended to ignore completely.

"So," Sonic trailed. "Humour me?"

Knuckles' attention returned to his friends. "I don't know what exactly a god is, Sonic. Maybe no-one does, and it's harder to tell between languages or across times. The old people called Perfect Chaos a god. They would consider the Time Eater a god, I guess." Sonic raised a brow and Knuckles quickly continued before the hedgehog could think of interrupting him. "The old legends are full of gods. Many many gods. There are weather gods, seasonal gods, gods embodying forces of nature, gods of day and night, plants and animals, rain and sun. Some are made out to be powerful, devastatingly so. Others seem more like people. The same word, _god_ , gets used for the force driving the lava flow in the volcano, for Perfect Chaos and for the creator of the entire world." Knuckles shrugged. He'd had a many long, solitary winter evenings to contemplate that sort of thing if nothing else came to attract his attention. "That pretty much makes the word meaningless. A god is something powerful. As such, the Master Emerald might be one, too. I don't know. I don't think it matters."

Sonic was frowning. "Huh. Do you, um, believe in them, then?"

It was a blunt question, like Sonic asked them, and one Knuckles had no answer to either. He knew Perfect Chaos to be real. What did that mean for other creatures out of tales of old? Nothing, perhaps. He shrugged and decided to just throw that question back at Sonic. Let him see how he dealt with it himself. "Do you?"

The hedgehog blinked, clearly not having expected to be asked in turn. "I don't know. It doesn't matter much, to me, I think."

Maybe that was right, anyway. Knuckles frowned. He'd meant to spend some time thinking on the important questions of existence, in honour of the occasion, but he'd not been in any way prepared to discuss them. Least of all with _Sonic_. Discussion of deep things was more Tails' forte, although this wasn't his topic either perhaps.

The echidna's eyes sought the little fox as the thought hit and Tails' double tails swooshed behind his back at the sudden attention.

"So, the first cycle was when the world was created?", Tails recounted Knuckles' words from a minute ago. "How long ago? The Alignment cycles don't all have the same length."

Knuckles grinned, secretly as glad for this awkward topic to end as the others. He was already growing tired of explaining things, too, but at the same time, it was nice, kind of. Nice that someone cared, someone other than him.

He nodded at Tails. "The first one started about 6000 years ago."

Tails smiled. "Well, I'm sure the actual universe is a couple billion years older than that, but we're talking legends, not physics. Maybe it's the time when the first Echidna society started?"

Knuckles shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe?" It was beginning to be frustrating how many things ended at some variation of 'don't know'. There were reasons why Knuckles wasn't always particularly fond of thinking too hard on things that just were and that you couldn't change anyway.

Feeling Sonic's eyes on him, Knuckles frowned and turned back around to face the hedgehog. " _What_."

Sonic's eyebrows went up comically fast. "Nothing. Really. Just... You never struck me as a philosophy on life type of guy, so, this is unexpected? Not necessarily bad unexpected, just, you know."

It felt odd to agree to Sonic's judgment of his basic character. "No. Yes. I mean, I'm not." He shook his head, started over, not the first time today. He was badly accustomed to talking, much less to anything other than the superficial, nonsensical talk that tended to fill most conversations, and he found he utterly failed at it. For a moment, he wished he could just go back to the simplicity of hitting Sonic for something he said. It was an option... Then again, he had promised himself to try and not repeat past mistakes, and there had been so many misunderstandings. He would cross that line, soon again, probably, but it didn't need to be today of all days. He sighed. "I, _we_ , now, I suppose, are celebrating a new beginning, and an ending of this old cycle. It is traditionally a time for contemplation, of the important things. I was prepared to do that alone, by myself, but you wanted to partake, in, I quote, "whatever it is", so, I suppose, you get philosophy, too." His gaze flicked back to actually meet Sonic's eyes. "Anything else?"

The hedgehog obviously noticed the challenge not at all well hidden in the tone, but he smiled. "Nope, all good."

Knuckles nodded, and turned back to finally make the way down the corridor.

"You know a lot about all this history stuff," Tails noticed. Approval? Knuckles wasn't sure.

"I didn't always," he allowed, looking back towards the wall with the Perfect Chaos mural. "But it seemed important. I couldn't have anyone else know more about this place or the Master Emerald _again_. It's dangerous."

"That's what you say to avoid having us call you a history geek," Sonic said and earned an elbow from Tails for it.

"Not everyone is ignorant of the past, you know. There's a lot to be learned."

Sonic rubbed his side. It couldn't actually hurt, and he totally should have been fast enough to evade Tails' blow altogether. "I'm not ignorant," the hedgehog complained. "I know lots of history! Perfect Chaos and Dark Gaia and the whole ARK thing, for example."

Knuckles found himself grinning. "You mean you know the history that's been trying to kill us all."

Sonic nodded seriously. "Exactly! The important kind!" He stretched out an arm, pointing further back the corridor at the Perfect Chaos mural. "There, your folks made murals of it! Important!"

"Obviously." Tails laughed, then suddenly caught himself and turned back to Knuckles. "What are we going to draw?"

Hesitantly, the echidna shrugged. "I couldn't choose."

"Huh. We don't exactly have a prophet handy, so I suggest we do some actual event." Sonic had stopped protesting his history knowledge as well as pretending his ribs hurt.

Tails grinned. "Good starting point. But I totally see your problem, Knuckles; we've known each other for a few years only, and we've had dramatic battles and giant monsters aplenty."

Sonic again indicated the mural they'd already passed. "The Perfect Chaos incident is out; it doesn't deserve two murals."

"True." Tails nodded. "And it has to be something involving Knuckles." At Sonic's questioning look, Tails shrugged. "It's an Echidna tradition, on an Echidna island. All the murals here have something to do with the island's people. Right now that means Knuckles. So."

Sonic nodded. "Makes sense. Sorry Dark Gaia." He grinned.

Right, Knuckles thought. He'd sat Dark Gaia out, waiting, worrying, wondering, listening to the disturbed echoes of Chaos in the Master's energy, but he'd let them fight their battles alone when maybe he could've been of help. Perhaps that was something he ought to change, too. Stop getting involved only when he basically stumbled into it. Maybe he should actually go down and see what he could do, next time something terrible happened on the surface. To his friends.

Unaware of the echidna's thoughts, Sonic still wore a grin as he went on. "Dark Gaia was _ugly_ anyway; we're not drawing that."

"That requirement drastically shrinks down our options." Tails laughed.

Knuckles was following the exchange between his friends with growing bafflement. He'd not been prepared for a discussion on it, even if he was going to do a mural, and he was entirely unprepared for the motivation and vigor his guests showed for their participation.

Unfortunately Sonic had caught up with Knuckles' silence and decided to round on him now. "Hey, it's your celebration." It didn't seem much like that right now, Knuckles thought. "Any suggestions? You thought about it, didn't you?"

He had, that was true, in a way just now again, but now that he was asked, he felt self-conscious about the idea.

"Aww, come _on_!"

"I... I was thinking when we fought Metal Sonic?" There was a second of silence and he scrambled to explain the choice. "It's... The murals show changes, important events that signified a swing, a change of direction, a change of philosophy or beliefs even. We have the one that shows you and me and Eggman fighting over the Master Emerald. We're enemies on this one."

"We were not when we fought Chaos, or when we all went to space." Sonic had a way of just completely ignoring Knuckles' past mistakes that was more astounding than he'd ever dare tell the hedgehog.

"No, but although we ended up there together, we didn't go for the same cause exactly. I went for the Master Emerald."

Sonic folded his arms, head tilted slightly at Knuckles in a way that spoke of doubt and an air of 'you have a wrong picture of what happened'. "You also came for Eggman, and we'd have been in real trouble without you and your shiny rock. Shadow and I could only use the Emeralds because you'd gotten them out of the Eclipse Cannon and all."

Knuckles shook his head. "Yes. No. Yes, I ended up on your side, but not actually by choice. It was circumstance."

Sonic looked ready to launch into an explanation on why that was wrong, but Tails stopped him by raising his hand. "I get it," he said. "You were in Station Square and on ARK as Guardian of the Master Emerald first, and anything else second."

Knuckles nodded silently.

Tails smiled. "But you weren't coming after what we thought was Eggman and turned out to be Metal Sonic to protect the Emerald."

That was closer to the gist of it, but not entirely true. "I was protecting the Emerald. On a larger scale, you could say. If Eggman conquered the world, he'd not stop at my borders, would he?"

Sonic looked like he'd made some startling realisation right now, but wasn't protesting anymore. "You figured that?"

Knuckles glared at him. "Do you think I'm dumb?" A grin spread on Sonic's face, and the Guardian groaned. "Wait, don't answer that." He took a breath, trying for the right words. "I can't always... I need to... weigh my options. I need to have priorities, and they're not the same as yours. They can't be. I need to be careful in ways you don't, but I was wrong when I thought this is your fight and I can look away as long as it doesn't directly involve me. Because in the end, it will involve all of us."

Sonic nodded, and the teasing grin had faded from his expression for the moment. "Yeah." He studied Knuckles briefly. "Good choice, I'm game." A sudden grin was back on his face. "I hope one of you can draw somewhat decent clouds."

Knuckles blinked. "Oh."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While we see only the mural with Eggman and Super Sonic in Sonic 3&K, and a large Perfect Chaos mural in Sonic Adventure, I take the liberty to assume if murals are a typical cultural thing, there'd be more than one on Angel Island. We blast through its zones so quickly in game, there have to be lots of unseen nooks and crannies.


	6. Murals and Glyphs

While Sonic and Tails started out with a discussion on what to draw where and how, complete with frantic wavings of brushes at each other, Knuckles selected a brush and paint for himself and took to the side of the area they'd designated their mural space. It had been painted before, but the colour had faded to random vague lines at the edges that formed neither glyphs nor pictures anymore, leaving the wall almost empty.

It would not stay that way. As had been common with some of the murals, especially from more recent times, Knuckles wanted to include a text describing the events depicted in their picture that would put it into context for any future viewer. The inscriptions had not survived for all the murals. The fateful one in Hidden Palace, showing Sonic and Robotnik, had been without inscription for context, and wouldn't that have saved them all so much trouble?

Knuckles intended to do better with their mural, so he'd have to write a text for it. For all his life, he'd been reading a lot more than written anything himself. He wrote the occasional note, or reworked faded glyphs on old parchment or stone, but he rarely wrote an actual text. As he started out, it required all of his concentration, but by then Sonic and Tails were thankfully busy with their tasks, and after a while he found he dropped into a flow of sorts that made their occasional comments to each other just blips at the edge of his awareness. For several minutes, his world narrowed down to the stone and the brush, to choosing the right words and to lining glyph after glyph, careful, precise. He was going to do this properly now, and he didn't want his writing to look sloppy.

He was so absorbed in his work that when he noticed Sonic had called his name, he wasn't sure if he'd called it only once or if he'd tried to get his attention for a while now.

Slightly annoyed at being interrupted, he lowered his brush and turned to the hedgehog. "What, Ch'ooj?"

Sonic had obviously been about to say something, but instead of actually doing that, he blinked, frowned, tilted his head at Knuckles. " _What_ did you say?"

It took Knuckles a moment to go back to it and realise he'd mixed two languages in a two word phrase. "Um. I said "Ch'ooj". That's "Blue", in your language."

"You were really busy writing; it makes sense something like that would happen," Tails called from the other end of the mural in the making, but Knuckles didn't have time to process let alone answer that, because Sonic was grinning a sort of disbelieving grin.

"What's much more interesting here," the hedgehog trailed, tone light and amused, "did you _petname_ me? That's _my_ thing, _Knux_."

The echidna shrugged. He hadn't been thinking. "I guess?"

"Now I want to know what else you call us in your head." Sonic's ears twitched.

"A nuisance, sometimes. Like, when you interrupt something I'm working on."

Sonic laughed. "Fair enough."

Knuckles raised a brow. "So? What did you even want?"

"You said you can't paint!" Sonic had stepped up next to Knuckles and was looking at the wall.

Knuckles finished the sweep of the glyph he'd been working on when Sonic interrupted, then turned back to the hedgehog. "I can't. I can _write_ , Sonic. That's not the same."

His blue friend contemplated first him, and then the writing. "Looks like painting to me," he said. "Here, you can draw hands!" He pointed.

"That's kind of my name, Sonic." Knuckles found a grin spread on his face. He studied the glyph for "knuckles". It was indeed a very stylized fist, with emphasis on the conical spines.

In his own part of the mural, Sonic had by now finished drawing himself, in bright yellow, with some blurry, jagged circle around that resembled a ball of flames. The picture of Sonic himself somehow managed to be very easily recognisable, with several triangular spines on the head, and at the same time so simplistic that it looked kind of clumsy, and kind of like the glyph of someone who couldn't write with quite a steady hand for some reason. Next to the little yellow hedgehog figure, Sonic had depicted Tails in the same colour as himself; the fox was mostly distinguished by the larger ears and lack of spines on the head, and the double tails. A yellow circle surrounded the fox picture. On Sonic's other side, there was another circle, with the stick and circle style body in bright red. It lacked the head yet, and the hands.

Sonic pointed first at his half-finished picture of Knuckles, then at the writing at the side of the mural, waving at the glyph for Knuckles' name and the one that looked like an echidna head and in this context meant the syllable "chu" . "Here, how about you do your own head and hands? You obviously can do them. If you let me do it, you might end up looking crippled."

Knuckles felt a grin spread over his face and accepted the brush from Sonic.

Tails, who'd been hovering near the ceiling to comfortably reach the upper part of the mural where he wanted to draw Metal Sonic's airships, dropped down to watch Knuckles' quick, practiced strokes outlining first two fists and then the echidna head shape.

The Guardian didn't add in the face, but handed the brush back to Sonic. "Here, I think you can take it from here."

Sonic shook his head. "Yeah, probably. But seriously, you do realise that you _just like that_ drew a good looking head, and I took ten minutes to get mine and Tails' somewhat right? And you say you can't paint."

"Because it's not painting to him," Tails said.

Sonic frowned, but Tails was waving towards the half-finished scrawl of glyphs. "If it's a common symbol in this writing, it's like drawing a letter. It's a practiced motion."

Knuckles shrugged. "I guess?"

Sonic grinned. "I'd call cheating, but, it's party day."

Knuckles wasn't sure yet if he wanted to argue with Sonic about the "cheating", but Tails was pointing at the rows of glyphs. "But those are not letters, not like _our_ letters. Do they represent one word, or something else?"

"Words or syllables, depending on context. A lot of the syllables are actually short words that speak like the sound of that syllable, others are... shorthands." He'd never thought he'd explain his people's writing system to anyone.

Tails was still studying the glyphs. "It reads top to bottom?"

Knuckles nodded. "You read the two glyphs next to each other, then the two below, then the two below that."

"What's it say, so far?" Even Sonic seemed curious in a way, about something as technical as writing.

"There's a classical way of telling a story in writing like this is," Knuckles explained. "The beginning explains who the people in the tale are."

Tails pointed. "So that's your name, I guess?"

"And next to it is... an Emerald, with something on top?" Sonic was frowning.

"It's a flat hand," Tails realised. He smiled. "That's the "Guardian of the Master Emerald" symbol."

Knuckles nodded. "It combines the sign for the Emerald and the glyph for "guarding or shielding something"."

Sonic waved at the wall. "Where's my name?"

Knuckles pointed. "I spelled out your names as they speak. I thought of translating, but it sounds weird. And the old language has no word for "sonic". I could've called you "sound" as in, you know, "noise"." He grinned.

Sonic pulled a face. "Gee, thanks."

"Hey, I said I didn't."

"This is a ship, right?" Tails had ignored the short byplay entirely. He was rubbing his chin, contemplating the writing like some puzzle to be solved.

"Yes, it's a ship. The glyph before it reads "Ka'an", that is "Sky"."

Tails brightened. "The airships!" He tilted his head at Knuckles. "You have no word for "air"?"

The Guardian shook his head. "We do. But no word for "airship", so I made one. It's... There's a system to how you describe things. This here," he waved a hand vaguely around, "gets transcribed as "sky-land". You don't write "Floating Island". You say that. You say other things, but in writing, a floating island, such as Angel Island or Sky Babylon or the Lost Hex, it's written as "sky-land", made up of "sky" and "land". So, these," he indicated Tails' beginnings of drawing airships, "are "sky-ships"."

Tails nodded. "Makes sense. You need to be concise writing like this. Each glyph takes a lot of time, and a lot of space on whatever you're writing on. And it would be hard to read right if there aren't rules."

Knuckles shrugged. "Rules changed a lot. You need to know when something was written to interprete it right."

"Sounds complicated," Sonic noticed. "Really, that must've taken ages to learn."

"I don't know. I don't remember."

Tails shook his head. "But surely someone taught you; I can't imagine how you'd learn that all by yourself."

Knuckles sighed. "As I said. I. Don't. Remember."

"Sorry," Tails said, wincing. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"What he means is that you're a big, red mystery," Sonic noticed. "And Tails can't _stand_ unsolved mysteries."

"Well, you'll have to deal with not solving this one, because I sure never did." Knuckles folded his arms, the stem of the brush he still held poking somewhere near the crook of his elbow, but he hardly felt it. It was a frustrating topic. "Was I too small to remember? Did I forget about most of my childhood? Did I hit my head or something? I _don't know_. I don't- I don't _feel_ like there's a gap or anything. Everything makes sense until you start to think about it, and then it falls apart. Where is everyone else? Why did they leave me here? Was it an accident? Did they leave on purpose? Was I forgotten about?" He forced a breath. He knew he was rambling, that he was saying things he might regret bringing up, but he couldn't stop. "I just... sometimes I wonder why I was left behind. Why would they, my parents or anyone else, really, why would they leave me? And then I get angry, at whoever it was who left me here, and then I get angry at _myself_ for being angry because I don't even know if that's what happened and-" He caught himself off, remembering the thought from a couple days ago. "Maybe they didn't actively leave me, on purpose I mean. Maybe something terrible happened to everyone else here. I don't know, an illness or an eruption or some other catastrophe and somehow only I survived it. Maybe someone came after the Emerald and killed everyone. I don't know. I _can't_ know. And then I'm mad again at myself because I'm assuming and -" He gulped in another quick breath of air to carry him through the last part. "And I'm always assuming the worst of the other echidnas first. I always assume it's their fault, or maybe that it's mine and I did something to deserve," he waved a hand around to try and encompass the entirety of the deserted island, " _this_."

Sonic frowned at him, but not in a way that suggested he was mad - why would Sonic be mad? - but in an unusually thoughtful kind of way. He exchanged a look with Tails, who gave a weird half-smile, something like a nod of permission and a shrug.

"Would you think Tails deserved being left alone?", Sonic asked, and the question was so unexpected that Knuckles just stared at him. Catching the look, Sonic waved a hand towards the fox. "We're not sure how Tails came to be left by himself, but since a lot of people didn't treat him well because of his second tail-"

"You think his family or community cast him out for looking different?" Knuckles stared, a quick surge of anger vibrating sharp and hot through his body.

Sonic steadily met his glare, apparently aware it was not directed at him this time. "Let's say the thought has crossed our minds a few times, yes. So, do you think he deserved this?"

"No!" The word was a sharp snap, sharper than he'd intended. He wasn't angry at Sonic, and certainly not at Tails.

Sonic seemed utterly unbothered by the tone. "So, recap here. Tails was four when we met, and he doesn't remember his folks. You also don't remember your folks. Tails, scientific conclusion?"

"You were probably a similar age," the fox said, softly, gently, inexplicably unruffled at having his own troubled past discussed.

"We don't know that," Knuckles argued. "Like I said, I -"

Sonic cut him off mid-sentence. "Right, we don't know. We're speculating. _You're_ speculating, and with very little hard facts to start out from. Tails, is that good method?"

Tails shook his head. "It's very bad science."

Knuckles grumbled. "It's not science."

"True. But it _is_ speculating." Sonic still steadily held his gaze.

"So, you're meaning to tell me to drop it because it doesn't lead anywhere?" The echidna huffed out a frustrated breath. "You're probably right, too. It's just - it doesn't make _sense_. My memory doesn't make sense. My _life_ doesn't make sense. I know things I shouldn't know, and I can't say why. I remember being much smaller than now. I liked to crawl into spaces not even Tails would fit today. I remember _being_ small. But I don't really know how long ago that was. I don't really know how much time passed, and it's fuzzy when my first memory is. There are things I know and can do and I don't remember being told. I don't remember being told anything. But I know a lot of things, and it's kinda scary because I never remember learning any of it. I know I'm Guardian. I know what I'm to do here. I know how to use the Emerald. I knew what Chaos Emeralds are like before I'd even seen one, before you came with them to the island. I know what plants are good to eat and how to prepare them and stuff. I know how to read and write. I knew how to speak your language, but... I actually remember teaching myself to read that."

Sonic blinked, but he seemed to take Knuckles' new outburst in stride, compared to Tails at least, who was speechlessly staring again. "You taught yourself to read our language," the blue hedgehog repeated, Knuckles wasn't sure because it was the last thing he'd said or because it seemed the least troublesome thing to pick up.

"I knew how to speak it, and there are scrolls with translations." Knuckles shrugged. "Your script is rather easy to learn."

Sonic snorted, waved at the wall. "If this is your starting point, I can even imagine. How many symbols do you have? Hundreds?"

"Several hundreds, I guess. It's hard to tell because they combine and make new glyphs."

"Like sky-ship." Sonic smiled, carefully, like he knew _Knuckles_ knew he was trying to distract him, and unsure if there would be resistance.

But the echidna was grateful for Sonic's ability to focus on harmless and non-serious things. He didn't want to think about it anymore, not right now at least. "Yeah, like that."

Sonic's smile steadied a little, and the green eyes flicked across the mural. "I think I'm gonna draw _lots_ of cool lightning bolts between the airships," he declared.

A while ago, Knuckles would've considered it a random statement, but he was starting to see how it was not, not quite. He wasn't sure how to reply, but Sonic was still talking anyway, and now he was looking at Tails, who still looked stricken and uncomfortable. Knuckles felt sorry, but it seemed like Sonic was going to be the one to eradicate any low mood that so much as looked his way.

"There's just one problem," the hedgehog was saying. "I can't draw my epic lightning storm anywhere, because _you_ ," he mock glared at Tails, "haven't even finished your _first_ airship, and _you_ ," now the look zeroed in on Knuckles, "haven't drawn us a single cloud, because you're not done with the story writing. Come on, speed it up!"

Tails shook his head, but he was smiling again. "Are we slowing you down?"

"Yes! And you know I _hate_ being slowed down!" Sonic waved his brush for emphasis, almost stabbing Knuckles in the eye.

"Okay, okay, we're going back to work." The echidna went to pick his own brush back up. "And technically, it was you guys who interrupted."

Sonic grinned. "You'll have to forgive us for being illiterate simpletons."

Knuckles snorted, secretly glad for the banter, for getting over the uncomfortable topic of before. "I think it's hardly appropriate calling Tails an illiterate simpleton."

"Oh, but it's okay calling me one?" Sonic was back to gesticulating with his brush.

"Your words, not mine." Unexpectedly, Knuckles found he was grinning. It felt good to.

"Really Sonic." Also Tails was smirking, and rather mischievously at that. "If you wish to identify like that, nobody is going to stand in your way here. Feel free to be yourself."

"That's extremely generous and open minded of you guys. Thanks." Sonic actually bowed at them. "I shall express myself in this painting now."

"You do that." Knuckles turned back to his writing to hide his grin. "But don't screw up my face, hedgehog."

Sonic laughed.


	7. Rivers of Jade and the Fall of the Sky

Knuckles leaned back against the opposite wall of the tunnel, taking in their combined work in the flickering gleam of torchlight.

At the left edge of the swirly frame Tails had insisted on drawing around the mural, several long rows of glyphs in his tidiest handwriting scrawled from top to bottom, offering a brief retelling of the events depicted. No matter when and who would look at this as historical reference in the future, they wouldn't be guessing on who was involved and what sides they'd been on.

The centre of the image was taken up by Tails' actually rather good depiction of Metal Overlord, complete with long, flailing limbs that wrapped around dark clouds, drawn by Knuckles' hand, all soft edges and swirls as he knew clouds, and some slightly out of scale airships, drawn by Tails again, in technically accurate sharp angles and straight lines. The scene was illumined by bright yellow flashes of lightening, sharp zigzag lines and star-shaped highlights, added in by Sonic, quick slashes of paint and a little more of them in number than would've been strictly necessary.

At the middle bottom of the giant drawing, the three glowing figures stood out bright and proud as the lightest part of the scene, even brighter than Sonic's overeagerly drawn lighting bolts. It made them easily the focus point, although they were much smaller than the powerful robot. Sonic had drawn himself grinning, Tails looking what was maybe supposed to look thoughtful and looked a little bit weird instead, and Knuckles had ended up with a grim scowl of sorts that was somehow oddly in character, if the Guardian was being honest.

To the far right, in the lower corner, they'd signed their names, Sonic and Tails in the lettering of the surface people, and Knuckles had opted to put both languages.

"It looks _awesome_."

Knuckles startled at Sonic's exclamation. It wasn't that he'd yelled or spoken particularly loudly, but it had been quiet for a long moment and the sudden words seemed to be breaking a spell.

"Absolutely! I didn't think we'd do so well!" Tails sounded happy, and when Knuckles finally turned to look, the fox was standing so close to Sonic he was almost leaning against his brother, and there were matching grins on both of their faces.

Sonic wrapped an arm around Tails, pulling him even closer, but apparently mostly to get the chance to ruffle his bangs in mock, laughing... complaint? "Oh, you unfaithful, you! Come on, with the three of us working together, how could the result be anything but the awesomest?"

Tails was laughing, trying in vain to wriggle free of Sonic's hold. "Awesome doesn't have a superlative!"

"Stop deflecting, and it totally should!" Sonic too was still laughing, but he let Tails go, only to spin round on Knuckles. "What about you? You like it, too?"

Without thinking, Knuckles' gaze flashed back to their work, still shiny and slick with the slowly drying paint.

"Oh, wow, Is that a _real_ smile? Look, Tails, he's totally smiling!" The blue hedgehog somehow managed to sound baffled and pleased at the same time.

It was only now that his attention had been drawn to it that Knuckles realized Sonic was right, he _was_ smiling, and it felt like he had been smiling for a while already now. "Yeah, I like it," he admitted, feeling like he ought to say something.

Looking back to his friends, he found them both still smiling, too, but at him now. Sonic had paint all over himself, even on his cheeks and behind his ears. Tails had fared slightly better, but he too had paint staining his fur up to his elbows. Knuckles found himself laughing, looked away back at the mural to stop, and it was still all shiny and it would be here long after they were gone and he'd not had to paint something alone, and suddenly there was a lump in his throat instead. He blinked, trying to catch the breath stuck somewhere behind the lump. "I-"

"Whoa whoa whoa, hey!" There was a rush of wind as Sonic moved, and then there was a hand on his shoulder, a light but unwavering weight. "No need to thank us; it was fun!" He was grinning again, head tilted in a way that usually came with a joke and tease, but his ears were curved down and back in what was closer to worry.

"Yes, it was awesome!" Tails, only slightly slower than Sonic, had appeared at Knuckles' other side.

The echidna shook his head. "But I think I do. You didn't have to come. I didn't even _ask_ you to come. But you're still here and -" He floundered, unsure of what he even wanted to say. "I'm always... alone, here."

Sonic frowned in instant indignation. "We come visit!"

"That's not what I mean and you know it." Knuckles finally found himself able to meet the hedgehog's eyes. "I don't - I'm used to being on my own. I'm _fine_ being on my own. It's rare that I miss having people around, because there never were, not that I remember. But this-" He waved vaguely at the new mural. "This... I - I didn't know if it would even make sense or work out or have any point if I celebrated this without, I dunno, whoever was supposed to celebrate this together. There aren't other clans or families or whatever to come visit for occasions like this. It's just- me, left."

"No, there's _us_ left." Tails was looking up at him with bright blue eyes, narrowed in that same unwavering sense of certainty Sonic's hand still held on his shoulder.

"He's right," the hedgehog agreed. "Look, we're on a mural together. I hear those things are always right." He winked, but that didn't take the rare serious look off his face.

Knuckles nodded and swallowed the lump. "Thanks. And sorry." Embarrassment had taken a while, but now it was there and part of Knuckles wanted to duck his head and hide behind his quills.

But Sonic was smiling with a casual shrug. "No worries, people get all emotional about New Years or Christmas or whatever holiday of theirs everywhere."

"Yeah," Tails agreed, "it gets really mushy sometimes!"

Sonic pulled a face. "Like those romantic Christmas songs... Ugh."

Tails grimaced, too. "Those are the worst! Yuk!"

Knuckles laughed, and next to him, Sonic's stomach gave a loud growl that made Tails laugh along with Knuckles.

Sonic for his part grinned ruefully, claiming back his hand to pat at his belly. "Okay, now this was fun and all, but please tell me this isn't a fasting holiday and we can go grab some snacks now?"

"Didn't you eat breakfast?" At another time, Knuckles might have been annoyed, but for the moment, still faced with their mural, he felt light and carefree and like he could really accommodate Sonic's being always hungry. They had time for a snack. Still, it didn't hurt teasing him.

"That was forever ago! I'm half starved already!"

Next to Knuckles, Tails waved his hand in a so-so gesture. "Close enough."

Knuckles shook his head in exasperated amusement. "Yeah, okay, we'll find you a snack. How do you like apples? The trees in the Marble Gardens carry the first ripe ones."

Sonic grinned. "They're not chili dogs, but that sounds good."

"I'm sorry; chili dog trees don't seem to like the climate up here." Knuckles tried for an 'apologetic' shrug with it.

As hoped, it broadened Sonic's grin and pulled a giggle from Tails. "Maybe you should try a greenhouse," the fox quipped.

"Maybe next year."

"Right, best start a garden project in spring."

"Do you do lots of garden projects, Tails?" Knuckles started off down the corridor, mentally mapping out a way that would take them towards the Marble Gardens quickly and without actually passing through the deeper parts of Hydrocity. There was no need to terrify Sonic today.

"No, he builds planes in his freetime. Planes come with the advantage you don't need to remember watering them." Sonic was still grinning. Or again? It was hard to tell, because for some reason it seemed his most common facial expression.

"Hey!" Tails bristled. "I have that cactus!"

"Yes, and it's a cactus. They survive deserts."

Knuckles shook his head at the antics. "You could always plant stuff outside, you know. There's this thing called rain."

"Ohhh! Brilliant idea, don't you think, Tails?"

The fox leveled a glare at Sonic. "Yeah, quite."

Tails was good at a lot of things, pretending to be mad was not among them. Knuckles grinned to himself while he led them down a set of stairs and into another tunnel. It was narrower than the last, and the sandstone bricks that made up the walls of the more ornate tunnels higher up soon gave way to sleek, dark and mostly featureless rock.

His friends had forgotten their playful squabble and were looking around with interest. "We didn't come through here on our first visit," Sonic noticed.

Knuckles didn't bother questioning if 'visit' was the right word here. It was definitely the right word today, after all.

Tails was looking at the walls and ceiling. "Is this part of a natural cave?"

"Parts of it, I think. There are places where you can see traces of tool use, though. I think it was broadened and connected where it didn't form a full tunnel you could walk through." Knuckles swept a look along the stone walls around, too. A bit of water was dripping from one of the walls.

They met a lot more water at the next intersection where their tunnel merged with another one. The middle of the tunnel ground had turned into a swift and noisy stream that covered more than half the tunnel's width.

"Are you intending to get us a bath, Knux?" The light tone almost entirely covered any background nervousness. Sonic probably didn't have the best memories of water-filled tunnels on the island.

"No, although we could use some washing up." Knuckles tucked off his gloves and knelt to scoop up two handfuls of water to try wipe the leftover paint from his gloves and arms.

Tails followed suit, and even Sonic gathered up some water to try and wash off the abstract artwork he'd produced on himself.

Standing back up and wringing out his gloves, Knuckles' eyes followed the stream uphill. "This is rare, especially in summer," he said. "Most of the time, this is a dry tunnel. It carries more water than this in spring with the snowmelt, but rarely in summer."

Tails looked up at him from where he was by now crouched next to a protesting Sonic and trying to wipe away the paint from the hedgehog's face. "So, where does it come from then? Hold still!"

Grinning and ignoring the last part as well as Sonic's cursing as Tails continued splashing water over his head, Knuckles pulled his now mostly dry gloves back on. "There was a heavy storm last week. Lots of rain. The water eventually runs into Hydrocity and its canals, but all that surface water has to get there first. Takes time."

"I see." Tails left off the grumbling hedgehog.

"Long as we don't have to swim," Sonic mumbled, brushing a hand through damp, sleek quills.

"I don't think so. This tunnel and the next few go down almost the entire time until they reach Hydrocity. Unless you build a dam in one, the water will just flow off." Knuckles smiled. There was a fine balance between wanting to make fun of Sonic, at least a bit, and the willingness to not make his guest uncomfortable today, along with the memory of several near drowning episodes that in a way actually justified Sonic's fear.

The information seemed to pacify the hedgehog for now, though, and they continued their way, uphill now. If they walked in line, nobody had to step into the water.

"How comes these tunnels are so mundane looking and the ones we came from and some in Hydrocity are so full of wall paintings and statues and such?" Tails was looking around again, always curious.

"It's a shortcut. A utility tunnel, you could say. It's not meant to be frequently used by a lot of people."

"Hydrocity was?" Sonic frowned. "I mean, there's boats and everything, but it doesn't seem a public park."

Knuckles shrugged. "It's fundamental to the Island's continued supply with water. The old writings speak of people finding and worshipping water spirits there. There aren't murals, not painted, but gold and jewels making up pictures. There aren't many left, most have been destroyed over the centuries, but some are still there."

"Can we see one?" Tails' double namesakes trashed in excitement.

Sonic for his part looked less than awed at the idea. "Does it involve drowning?"

Knuckles grinned. "It doesn't have to. We can take a small detour down the next intersection, will take only a few minutes, then we can go back. No water, I promise. Not more than here."

Sonic nodded at that, and Knuckles picked the left turn instead of right at the next tunnel they met. It led them steep down, past two stoic looking statues of echidna warriors that Sonic flipped a grinning salute which Knuckles decided to ignore, then through a door into a wider corridor with walls made from the greenish-blue tinted bricks that were typical for Hydrocity.

The water flowed off further downhill, joining a canal running along next to this tunnel's walkway, but Knuckles followed the corridor the other way for a moment, until they stood in front of a wall that was all gold and glittering gems, carefully arranged to form a picture of water and waves and vaguely people-like shapes rising from it under a distant, misty waterfall. Turquoise, opal and jade glistered as waves and waterfalls and twinkled in tune with streaks of gold invoking the image of sunlight falling into the room depicted.

Sonic whistled through his teeth. "That sure is something."

Tails reached out a hand as if to touch it, then pulled it back. "It must be worth... I don't even know how much. What does it show?"

"I don't know." Knuckles shrugged. "A lot of writings on walls and parchment alike have faded with time, and the picture has no inscription with it. I think we're seeing water spirits rising from the depths, but if there's a story to it, I don't know it."

Tails sighed. "It's sad to know how much is lost."

It wasn't a new sentiment to Knuckles, but he didn't know what to say in return. There was nothing he could do about it anyway.

"Story or not, it's pretty epic." Sonic smiled. "It's all sparkly and shiny. To think someone went and put that on a wall down here..."

"Do you think it was made down here?" Tails was frowning. "I'm not an expert, but I imagine you need special tools and everything."

"It's possible it was made somewhere else, a forge or a workshop, and then assembled in this place. It's not a thick wall. Just a single row of bricks." Knuckles waved at the artwork. "There are maps of these tunnels, and you can walk in another tunnel to right behind this wall here. If you stand there, you can hear the water running on the other side of the wall. It's possible the bricks were decorated and then put together to form the picture in this place."

"Huh." Tails rubbed his chin. "Maybe it was a doorway once, and then someone closed it off with this?"

"Possible. Maybe it was no longer being used, or it was closed down for a reason. If we could walk through there, we could go up that way to where we'll be later."

Sonic was apparently done appreciating sparkling old walls now. He poked at an obvious hole in his stomach. "Ready here?"

Knuckles laughed. "Yeah, let's go before you starve on us."

"That's a real possibility," Sonic insisted.

"Uh-huh."

They went back up the way they'd come, and passed another intersecting tunnel on their way back uphill. The ground here was distinctively washed out; a lot more water must have gone down here earlier. Knuckles in front with Tails and Sonic trailing behind, they picked a way around the mud and loose rocks and the still rather broad stream.

Sonic was ranting about this being a terrible choice of way when he stopped mid-sentence at a weird, grinding sound from above. "Did you hear -"

He didn't finish. Suddenly there was a loud crash, like drawn out thunder, a splashing, grinding, creaking cacophony. Knuckles span round just in time to catch a look of Sonic's wide eyes, then the world around them dissolved into falling rocks.

Something hit him hard against the chest, but it was too soft and furry to be a rock. Tails! And he moved too fast to actually have moved by himself.

The force of the collision knocked the wind out of Knuckles and threw both him and Tails what seemed a good distance through the air. The echidna landed painfully on his back, with Tails somehow on top. It was instinct that made him roll over in spite of his aching limbs, shielding Tails and his own head as good as possible under his arms.

Behind and around, with deafening noise rocks slid and fell and tumbled. Knuckles reached out to the Emerald's energy in a panicked rush, and it sang through his veins just in time to make whatever hit his back right then painful but not deadly. The Guardian chocked on a gasp, scrambled for a semblance of the sense of control that was needed to make this hasty emergency grasp on the Chaos energy less dangerous than the falling rocks. It trashed and churned under his skin, reacting to the panic that had drawn it rather than the control and balance that was more the Master's nature.

 _Focus!_ Knuckles ground his teeth, eyes squeezed shut and fought to block out the noise and the impacts of rocks still falling around and on him.

Below him, Tails whimpered, and Knuckles pulled him close to his chest and the energy around them both, hanging on with a firm hold now.

Then, suddenly, it was quiet. In his grasp, the Master Emerald's energy flickered and sizzled, prickling along his back as it worked to undo whatever damage had been done. Knuckles stopped fighting it, allowed his mind to check on the link with the Emerald, and relaxed minutely when he found it safe and unharmed, only troubled by his own turmoil. They were not falling then; the Emerald hadn't been taken or worse.

"Knuckles? Knuckles!" Tails' calls pulled him back to the here and now.

"Yeah?" His voice was a rough gasp.

"Can you move? It's not that I'm not grateful, but you're heavy..."

"Oh." Carefully he let go of his friend and rolled to his back at his side. The Emerald energy was washing out to a fading tingle and he felt momentarily sore and groggy in its wake. He closed his eyes for a few deep breaths and the attempt to get a grip on himself again.

"Hey, are you injured?" Tails was leaning over him when he opened his eyes, the sudden light from of the fox's flashlight stinging sharply. The flaming torch Knuckles had carried was who knows where.

"I don't think so." Experimentally he moved to sit up. Nothing a couple rings wouldn't fix in any case. "You?"

Tails shook his head. "No. A little sore. Sonic tackled me pretty hard and -"

 _Sonic_.

Where was Sonic?

Tails seemed to have realised he wasn't with them at this point, too. "Sonic!"

"Tails!" Sonic's voice was muffled as if distant.

"Where are you?!" Tails waved his flashlight around. The ground was stewn with rocks, and a large heap of them covered the entire height and width of the tunnel just a few meters away from them.

There came a cough before an answer. "I don't know! It's pitch dark in here. I don't see anything!"

Knuckles stiffly climbed to his feet. He had to be behind that wall of fallen rocks if he couldn't see their light. The direction of his voice fit, too.

Tails moved the shine of the flashlight across the heap of rocks that seemed to take up the entire width and height of the tunnel. There was no visible way through.

"Hey, I think I see a bit of light!" There was a trace of relief in Sonic's voice. "Just small blinks and dots, though."

"There have to be cracks and small holes in between the fallen rocks, I don't think we could hear each other if it was all solid." Tails' light still flicked back and forth across the rocks. "But it doesn't look like there's a hole big enough for one of us to crawl through. Can you come towards the light?"

"Uh, no." There was a nervous chuckle that was somewhat unlike Sonic.

Knuckles threw a worried look at Tails. "Are you hurt?!"

There was another cough and a moment of silence before Sonic answered. "No. Don't think so."

That could mean anything between the truth and Sonic bravery for "I'm quietly bleeding out while talking to you". Knuckles decided to settle on the positive option because panic wouldn't help anyone.

Sonic was still talking, too. "But I'm stuck. There's gotta be a whole heap of rocks on top of my back. I can't move."

Tails' eyes widened and Knuckles hoped that Sonic couldn't move because of the weight, and not because of some sort of spinal injury.

"Have you tried? Maybe you can push it off or wriggle out carefully."

Sonic snorted, a dull, weird sound through the wall of rocks. "I tried. The only things I can wriggle for real are my toes."

Knuckles let out a sigh, because that meant no for the worst possible injuries. "Keep trying!"

"What do you think I'll do, Knucklehead? But I'm sorry, I'm a speed and momentum guy, doing push-ups with a mountain on top is more your thing, really." It sounded like Sonic was grinning, even through the strain.

Also Tails was smiling hesitantly and somewhat disbelievingly, and Knuckles shot the fox a smile of his own, but Sonic's joking about it aside, he had a point. Sonic's strength was taken from his speed, and if he couldn't move enough to get speed of some kind, he probably wouldn't get out on his own, and not without additional injury if he'd grow desperate enough to try something like an ill-advised spin.

"Okay, don't wear yourself out. We'll try and dig through to you."

"That sounds good; you guys do the work!"

Impossible. Knuckles shook his head to himself, and focussed back on studying the cave-in before them. Boulders and smaller rocks lay chaotically toppled over one another. He set out to start at the side of a larger piece, more than halfway up to the ceiling. It would hopefully stabilise the others around it.

It was a shame he didn't carry the shovel claws, but running back to his hut for them would take far too long for his liking.

"Where do we start?"

The echidna turned back to Tails at the question and pointed. "I was thinking off to the side there. It'll be more stable than in the middle, and there's this big one that might hold some more of the weight."

Tails nodded, but still frowned. "We could use some tools..."

"We'll make do without them. I'm not bad at digging."

"Didn't say that. I'm not great a digging, I suppose. And if we're making just a small passage, we'll be in each other's way."

Knuckles contemplated the rocks. "You're not wrong there..."

Tails chewed his lip. "If you start digging, I can watch and look out for shifts. We don't need another one of us getting buried. And we can switch if you get tired."

Knuckles doubted the last part, but Tails was right on the rest, it was better to be cautious, and really, no two people could work comfortably next to each other in the narrow space.

Trying to move any of the rocks out of the way proved a near impossible task, not so much for their weight, but because the pile they had formed was terribly unstable. Everything shifted and creaked and Knuckles feared if he wasn't careful he was going to bring down what was left of the ceiling.

"I wonder how this happened," Tails said from behind him. He sounded anxious and was probably trying to distract himself.

"The rain must've washed out the ground and weakened the rocks above this tunnel," Knuckles guessed, skeptically studying the way the rocks and mud before him stapled on top of each other.

"The water!" Now Tails almost shouted, sounding alarmed enough to make Knuckles spin around to him. "Where is the water?!"

The red echidna blinked. Tails was right, there was no water on the ground here anymore, and they'd been walking next to a rather broad stream when the cave-in happened. "Oh no." He turned back to the wall of rocks. "Sonic?! Do you hear water running on your side?!"

"Yes! It sounds like a lot! Why?!" There wasn't quite as much bravado as before in the hedgehog's tone.

"Not sure, just asking!" Knuckles tried to sound unconcerned, but he wasn't sure how well he pulled it off, and as he went back to cautiously trying to shift rocks aside to make a way past them, he shifted through the tunnel layout in his head, to where slopes went down and up, trying to work out where the water would flow. If nothing else had collapsed, still the way they'd come. If something blocked that path... It would rise where Sonic was, until it could flow over the next small hill they'd come down, and flow down there, and finally gather in the tunnel behind the jewel picture, and rise to fill the tunnel from there. There wouldn't be a drain in that case.

Tails was looking at him worriedly, but didn't question the laden silence; he just took the small rocks Knuckles managed to extract and tossed them behind them. For a couple minutes, they worked quietly.

"Uh, guys!?" Now Sonic sounded closer to carefully hidden panic.

"What's it?!" Tails' eyes were wide.

"My feet are getting wet! I think - I think there's water rising in here!"

For a moment, Knuckles and Tails could only stare at each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly this entire fic was supposed to be fluff, with some angst of the "last of his kind" type. And then this happened. Oops.


	8. The Great Flood

Tails' eyes were wide, a nearly iridescent blue reflecting the bright beam of his flashlight. Scared and startled, but only for a handful of seconds. Then a frown dipped his brows, the large ears curving back, and it made him look no less young, but a lot less scared and a lot closer to hell-bent determined. "What can we do?!"

Knuckles bit his lip. It was an obvious question to ask. This was his home turf; it was his job to keep them safe here, and to find a way out of a situation like this.

In his mind, he flipped through the criss-cross of tunnels around here. There was not a single one he hadn't been in countless times; he knew the dark underground of the island as well as all the zones that saw daylight. He couldn't know how fast the water would rise where Sonic was, because that depended also on how much was flowing in and how fast, and how high it would go. But if Sonic was lying on the ground, a couple more centimeters might be enough to be fatal. They didn't have time, not for this slow shifting of rocks where they needed to watch their every breath lest it unsettle anything and bring more rocks down on them all.

Tails was still looking at him expectantly.

Knuckles grimly dropped the rock he'd lifted before Sonic's shout from the other side. "We don't have time for this. Sonic?!"

"Yeah?!" The trace of panic was still there in his friend's voice.

"Listen, we can't dig through here quickly enough without making more of it collapse! I know another way around; we'll come and get you! Might take a moment, but we're coming round to get you!"

Next to him, Tails gasped, but Sonic's answer was quicker than anything the little fox could've said. "'kay! Just, you know, hurry!"

Now Tails was quick enough to speak up. "We will! Hang in there!" The blue eyes narrowed back on Knuckles. "Lead the way."

There was nothing else to be said, so the Guardian just nodded. They scrambled across the rocks stewn about until the next sharp turn, then the floor was clear and Knuckles took off running. There was no need to worry Tails wouldn't be able to keep pace, because Tails was used to keeping pace with _Sonic_.

Knuckles took them pell-mell down the steep incline of the next corridor they came about, only able to slide around the sharp turns instead of smacking into the walls by grabbing the rock at the corners. He didn't bother to look over his shoulder at what Tails did to go round; the quick taptaptap of the fox's light feet, the whir of his tails and the bouncing shine of his torch always kept right behind him.

The wild chase down the dark pathway ended at a door that had them bursting into a lighter corridor lined with the greenish bricks of Hydrocity. Knuckles didn't slow his pace, took them alongside a noisy canal filled to the brim that was spilling water over its rim. The echidna almost slipped on the wet pavement several times, had to save himself with a quick glide and a scramble to regain his feet once when the path took a steep dive down. They raced across a wooden bridge that swayed wildly with the strain, then back up a round staircase. Knuckles took the old, worn treads two at a time; Tails didn't even bother with the stairs and took to the air entirely.

They emerged in another relatively well-lit tunnel with low ceiling and a sloshing, wild canal aside the walkway. "Is your flashlight - water-proof?!" Knuckles forced out the question between gasps for breath.

"Sure!" Even as breathless with the quick pace, Tails sounded indignant at the question.

Knuckles almost grinned and jumped into the canal at the end of the walkway. The current swept him along, dipping down into a slide, round and down through a couple narrow openings until it spat him out into the air. The water pummeled in a cascade towards a large pool below, but Knuckles caught himself in a glide, shaking water out of his spines and taking aim for a platform at the other side above the pool. Still wet and heavy, his glide dropped him short and instead of landing atop the platform, he could only snatch the ledge of it. When he pulled himself up, he found Tails already there, shaking water out of his pelt.

"Where to?"

Knuckles pointed up the wall. "There's a small entrance near the ceiling." He stepped up to the wall to climb.

Tails was already hovering above his head, both hands extended down to him. "I'm quicker. Hold on."

Knuckles didn't argue. It was neither the time nor the place for it, and when Tails' hands locked with his and he was pulled upwards at an astonishing speed, he had to admit that yes, this _was_ faster.

Tails swung him into the dark tunnel opening before them and they were back to running through the near darkness, but not for long, then another narrow staircase led them up to join a wider and lighter corridor with brick walls and floor again. A long way down the corridor, blues and gold reflected their torchlight.

"There's the jewel picture down there," Tails realized, coming up to run at Knuckles' side. "Do you think the way we came is clear?!"

Knuckles shook his head. "I don't know, but it'll be safer to break through another blockage if one of us isn't right below it!"

"What if we're not fast enough! It's been minutes, we needed quite a while to get from here to where the cave-in happened, what if Sonic doesn't have that long?!"

The echidna ground his teeth. He'd been thinking the same thing, all the way down here. It didn't even matter this time that Sonic couldn't swim, if he was pinned down, he'd drown as soon as the water level rose to his face. "Damnit, Tails, I don't – There's no quicker way!"

His gaze flashed to his friend, but it was the bright green and blue and gold twinkles that caught his eye on the wall behind Tails, and he skidded to a stop from his run. "Or maybe there is." He stared at the jewel picture. Water was running down the wall from creaks around its edges, lots of tiny waterfalls adding to the illusion of the rivers and lakes depicted actually moving.

Tails had realized he wasn't running with him anymore and had doubled back. "What's wrong?! Knuckles!"

"There's water behind there." The Guardian traced a fingertip along the creaks the spilled water down the ancient wall art.

Tails came up beside him, frowning. "That means it's flooded behind there! You said it connects to the tunnel where Sonic is?"

Knuckles nodded.

"We shouldn't be here," Tails continued. "We have to get to Sonic, and this looks like it'll burst. We don't want to be here when it happens!"

"But maybe we do." The echidna stared at the wall, transfixed with a sudden idea. "Sacrifice something of worth, because the values of things change, or you discover new items of value as the world changes with the passage of time", he mumbled.

Tails blinked at him, obviously devoid of understanding. "What?"

"It's something that's written down. Some of the philosophy I mentioned. Ancient words about... adjusting your values to a new time, to a change in the world." He looked at the mural in crystal and gold. "We're going to break that down and make a way through to Sonic." It felt strange saying the thought aloud. Final.

The little fox stared. "But... You said yourself that there isn't much like it left!"

Knuckles nodded. "Yeah." He studied the wall, the delicately arranged gems and glitter. "It is also the lowest part of this tunnel. There is water in there. It has nowhere to go. If we don't provide a way for it to flow off, it will soon have risen to Sonic's level, long before we can get there."

Tails bit his lip. "Can we even break it? It's holding all this water, at least so far."

The echidna felt a crooked smile ghost over his face. "No doubt about it."

There wasn't. Doubt, that is. If this was a sacrifice, he didn't feel its gravity yet. There wasn't time for doubts and regrets.

"I need you to hurry back some of the way we came, until after that corner with the statues Sonic waved at, someway up that last hill."

Tails still stared at him. "What about you? If it's full of water behind there, it'll come rushing this way if you break through the wall!"

Knuckles nodded. "I know. Don't worry about me. I'm not drowning in my own tunnels on an ancient holiday. Nobody will drown here today. But I know only to keep myself safe."

Tails was frowning, a serious expression set unfamiliarly deeply into his brow. But he was fighting to conjure up a smile, too. A stern one at that. "Okay. I'm going. But I'm coming back soon as it looks clear, and if I find out you drowned, you'll be sorry."

The Guardian grinned in spite of himself. "Just go."

"Be back in a minute. Good luck."

Knuckles nodded his thanks even as Tails turned and flew off.

The Guardian took a moment to close his eyes, try and still his racing heart. He counted to twenty to give Tails time to get clear, focused on the thrum of the Master Emerald's energy in the ground under his feet, like the island's heartbeat. Safe, steady, unfazed.

Then he reached out to that same energy, to its strength, to fiery, chaotic green, felt it tingle along his nerves, an electric shiver as he clenched his right into a firm fist. He didn't doubt he could break through this wall, but he'd have but one moment to find something, anything to hold on to and avoid being swept along. He took a last, deep breath, drew back and channeled all of his strength and some of that lend by the Great Emerald into his punch.

For a brief instant as his knuckles made contact, the stones gave way under his blow and for that triumphant second, he thought he could punch straight through. Then all the water that was behind the wall pushed back. The rock and gold and gems between his fist and the water crumbled and then it was like the whole world was falling apart around him. Rock and water broke over him and he realized how drastically he'd miscalculated the sheer force of it.

There was no chance to hold on to anything. There _was_ nothing to hold on _to_. It was a swirling, gushing tide that flooded over him, around him, swept him along, head over heels, completely out of control. What breath he'd held was smacked right out of his chest and he fought not to gasp in water instead of it. He flung out his arms in hopes of being able to grab something, anything as it rushed past, but the flood just carried him along and didn't let go.

He was spun up and down and around, then smashed into something head-first. Black sparks exploded in front of his eyes, washing out the blurry blue of the water. Somewhere distant, the Emerald cried out in alarm, but he didn't have the capacity to focus on it. His head pounded, his lungs burned a fiery ache with the need to breathe and the current was still tearing at his limbs, but he didn't feel like he was moving anymore.

There was something solid in front of and below him and he clumsily grappled for purchase on it. He'd thought it was a wall, but it was kind of round. A pillar maybe. The flood was pulling him against it, and he struggled to get his feet under him. Maybe he'd be able to climb free of the current?

The stone was slick with water and his grip failing with the grey darkness creeping into his vision from lack of air. He flung out a shaking hand in hopes of finding anything to hold onto and met a ledge and the bubbling, splashing sound of his hand breaking the water surface, but his quivering arms didn't have the strength to pull up his weight. The world swam and flickered and dimmed, his fingers slipped off the ledge again and he was sinking back under and –

Something closed around his wrist, near painfully tight and something that wasn't the water was tearing at his body, up and over that ledge and out of the water to his waist. He coughed and desperately gasped for air, dimly aware of more pulling and tearing and something repeatedly smacking him against the back before rolling him over. There were hands on his chest and at his neck, and there was shouting. "Knuckles!"

He blinked, vision clearing only slowly. Tails was leaning over him, blue eyes wide, ears flat. At seeing Knuckles' eyes open, the fox's face cycled near comically fast from worried over relieved to an utterly furious expression that Knuckles had rarely ever seen on him.

"You stupid, stupid idiot! Is that what you consider "keeping yourself safe", huh? HUH?!"

Knuckles tried to force his muscles to stop shaking. "I… miscalculated?"

" _Miscalculated_?! You almost got yourself killed!" Tails was still outright glaring at him.

There was no denying that, so Knuckles said nothing, instead attempted to sit up. In spite of his obvious anger, Tails lend a steadying hand when dizziness swept over the echidna once he was vertical.

"Thanks," he mumbled as his head cleared, and hoped Tails understood that covered everything from pulling him out of the water to helping him up.

Tails just nodded, but his expression was back to being more worry than anger. "I think you hit your head."

Knuckles swiped a hand over the ache on his forehead, finding a rather impressive goose egg and a cut that put a red stain on his glove as he pulled back. "I've had worse," he noticed, taking his first actual look around. "Oh."

What he'd thought was a pillar wasn't a pillar. It was a statue of an echidna, one of the tallest ones on the island, standing to six or seven times his own height. What he'd taken for a ledge wasn't the corner or a platform or anything of the sort, but the statue's giant, flat hand. It stood with both hands stretched out in front of it, palms up, in a receiving prayer pose, and Tails and him were sitting in the right of the giant statue's hands.

The fox had followed Knuckles' astonished look. "I think you can thank your ancestors for not being dead," he said.

"Yeah. Them, and you." He pulled his gaze back down from the stern face of the stone echidna above to his friend still crouched at his side, Tails' hand still a light weight on his shoulder, and the statue's large palm safely holding them up over the current still noisily rushing past below. If he'd had the time and less of a headache, he'd maybe have wanted to consider the symbolism of this weird turn of events, but they absolutely _didn't_ have the time.

"We need to go," he said, chancing a look down from their little island. The water level was clearly falling and was now only to the statue's knees when it must've been at least to its hips or probably its stomach when Tails pulled him up here. But that still meant it was higher than Knuckles was tall. No way he could run down there without being swept back under. "Do you think you can carry me?"

Tails nodded tersely. "Sure." He stepped up to the edge of the giant stone palm, balancing near the index finger. "When I went after you, the water was still so high I could barely fly between ceiling and water surface up there, and it was all the way to the ceiling when you smashed the wall in. I had to wait for it to fall some." He gestured vaguely up the corridor. "But I didn't think I'd have more time to wait. I almost didn't find you."

Knuckles grimaced. "Sorry. Thanks."

His young friend raised a brow at him. "Third time's the charm," he said, and somehow sounded almost exactly like Sonic for that moment. Then his twin tails lifted him up, Knuckles took hold of his wrists and was pulled along again.

He'd not even realized how far the flood had born him, but even with Tails' rather high speed, it was a minute until they were back at the smashed in wall. It was a nasty scar in the rocks now, water still bleeding through at slightly more than waist height.

Knuckles demanded Tails put him down as soon as the ground below seemed vaguely walkable. The fox didn't protest, at least not aloud. He was panting with the effort of carrying Knuckles for this distance, but even then he shot Knuckles a critical look like he was expecting him to not stay on his feet when put down. Knuckles ignored him. He wasn't a 100 percent, but he was certainly functional, and he didn't have time to consider a minor injury while just a few minutes' run from here now, Sonic could be drowning.

The water was often still knee-high, but no longer as fast a current, and it splashed around them as they ran further uphill. Slowing them down, when every second could still count. They'd lost far too much time already. What if – Knuckles clenched his fist, willing the thought away. Not today. Please not today, not one of his best friends, who'd come to do _him_ a favour. Who'd come not to lend hand in a fight against a common enemy, but just for the sake of friendship. Please no.

Their path merged into the tunnel they'd taken together, all three of them, before this happened. It dipped slightly downhill, and the water soon reached Knuckles' chest. He struggled to keep his pace against the resistance, rowing his arms in a half swim. Tails lost his patience with this turn of events, spinning tails pulling him up and hands snatching at Knuckles' left hand to drag him along, still half in the water, like some weird water sport.

Knuckles regained his feet stumbling when the tunnel curved back up, the water falling back to just below his knee. Still too high. Still way too high.

If Tails was thinking the same thing, he didn't say anything. Part running, part flying, he'd overtaken Knuckles by now, spurred on by that same desperate fear for their friend's life.

They squeezed past a spot where a smaller cave-in had covered half the width of the tunnel, waded through the small lake that had built up behind the blockage, out the other side, picking a weaving path around the rocks that now lay randomly stewn about the ground.

Then the beam of Tails' flashlight caught on what had to be the wall of fallen rocks that had necessitated this entire darn detour, swept down along the water covered ground from there, caught at the bright red of a sneaker between rocks and muddy water.

"Sonic! _Sonic_!"

The reply to Tails' frantic shout was a gurgled gasp and a splash.

Just a step behind Tails, Knuckles rounded a large, flat rock and found himself staring into Sonic's wide, panicked eyes. The hedgehog had wrestled an arm free and was struggling to lift and turn his head far enough aside to keep his nose above the water surface, shaking with the effort of it, every higher wave washing right over his nose and mouth.

Tails' gasp of "Sonic!" fell right along with Knuckles' "Chaos!". Ever quick of thinking, Tails dropped to his knees next to Sonic, splashing water all around them, both hands reaching to help hold Sonic's head up.

That wouldn't be enough. They needed to get him out of there, and quick. Knuckles dropped to inspect the rock that pinned Sonic down. It wasn't a whole heap of rocks as Sonic had guessed. It was a large, mostly flat thing that had fallen halfway on top of another, smaller one. In a way that was luck, because it would have flattened Sonic, not just pinned him down if it had directly fallen on top of him. From the way Sonic was still struggling, there had to actually be a little bit of space beneath the rock for him, just not enough to slip out.

Knuckles stumbled through the water to one end of the flat rock. "Tails!"

The fox's head snapped up.

"I'm going to lift this up. You'll have to pull him out and clear, no matter what happens, keep pulling, got it?!"

Tails nodded sharply, one hand still supporting Sonic's head, the other getting a good grip on his free arm.

Some small voice in the back of his mind clamoured that it would be dangerous to pull at Sonic, not knowing for sure if or how badly he was injured, but that went ignored, because they hardly had any choices here.

Knuckles brushed his hands along the edges of the rock, hooking his fingers under it. Slick with water as anything else around here right now. But it came even as his grip slipped up and he needed to readjust to get a grip beneath it. With a grunt of effort, Knuckles managed to yank it to knee height. His head gave a sharp pound of protest. Tails yelled something. There were lots of splashing noises and a strangled gasp of pain that was probably Sonic, and Knuckles finally managed to toss the slippery rock somewhat to the side, away from his friends, to where it caused another big wave before behind swallowed up by the water.

The echidna span round towards the others fast enough to send his head back into a dizzy spin. Tails was sitting in the water, both arms wrapped around Sonic who was shaking and gasping, clinging to Tails for dear life. Distantly Knuckles thought they should be checking him for injury, but for the time being all he managed was stumble to his friends' side and heavily drop down to sit next to them, water lapping around their waists. As if this was some casual sitting in a pool to cool down on a hot day. It felt absurd.

For a moment, all he could do was sit and breathe, pulse hammering in his ears in tune with the headache. He shook his head to clear it, firmly focusing on Sonic. What he could see of Sonic's back was bruised and scratched up, his quills tousled and bent all out of shape, sticking up in spite of dripping heavily with water. Tails' left hand was working on brushing them back down, mumbling some iteration of "it's okay, I got you, it's okay", over and over and over again, while his right arm was slung tightly around Sonic's shoulders. The hedgehog's face was practically buried into the narrow crook of Tails' neck. He was still shaking all over.

Hesitantly Knuckles reached out a hand for his friend's back, heaving with gasps or sobs or both. He lightly brushed a flat hand down from Sonic's shoulders, first left, then right, feeling along ribs and spine for any obvious damage and thankfully finding no broken bones or anything. He didn't know how to comfort, that would have to be Tails' job, but he awkwardly rested his flat hand lightly across Sonic's shoulder blade spines nevertheless. Sonic was a tactile person and for the moment even Knuckles, who really _wasn't_ a tactile person by any definition, appreciated feeling the lively stir of breaths under his fingers.

It took a minute until he realized some of the shake in his hand was his own and not just Sonic's. His mind had decided imagining what the last few minutes of Sonic's waiting for them to come to his rescue must've been like, barely able to keep his nose out of the water. Knuckles wasn't afraid of water, but he'd near drowned not just once before, too, not just today, the panic of that was universal for every breathing thing, and the thought made his stomach turn worse than the angry pound of the headache.

Tails had by now succeeded in mostly smoothing Sonic's quills somewhat back into shape, which Knuckles assumed was more comforting touch than anything to do with appearance, and Sonic's fingers no longer shook with the strain of clawing into Tails' fur. He was having some success catching his breath now, too, even though he was still quivering with what had to be coming down from the mother of all panic attacks.

And yet, Sonic was the first to speak again, voice muffled in Tails' embrace. "This party sure is one of a kind," he said. "Never a dull moment."

Tails chocked on a disbelieving snort of a laugh.

Knuckles stared. "I'm sorry." This was his fault. Somehow. Certainly.

Sonic stirred, pulling his head off Tails' shoulder to sit up enough to squint back at Knuckles. "You're an idiot, Knux."

He probably deserved being called worse, but Knuckles just gaped at him, because surely he couldn't be _smiling_? Weird and crooked and painful, but smiling nonetheless? "I – How can you -?"

Sonic's face twitched, and now it was clearly a weird smile. "It's called a joke, Knux. Some of us make them as coping mechanisms?"

And he got that, but that didn't help, because his brain had decided to stop interacting with his mouth.

Sonic was minutely shaking his head. "Tails? Tell him this whole thing isn't his fault, because he's got that guilty look written all over him again?"

Also Tails was smiling weirdly. "This whole thing isn't your fault," he parroted, looked at Knuckles for a moment, sighed. "Really, this kinda thing is called an accident."

"I'm okay; I'm kinda used to near dying." Sonic was sitting mostly by himself now, although Tails' arm remained around his shoulder. "It's fine."

Knuckles wanted to say something about how insane that was, and how it shouldn't be okay, how the whole last half an hour had been terrible and how it had only happened because Sonic and Tails had wanted to be nice to him, how all of them, Sonic in particular, had _almost died_ here because they wanted to _be nice to him_ , and how that so wasn't okay, that was really very far from okay and what could he ever do to make up for this, but somehow, when he opened his mouth what made it out was "My head hurts."

Sonic blinked. "Yeah, that's a bit of a unicorn look you got going there. Very festive. How'd that happen?"

"He decided to punch in a wall and try to drown himself," Tails threw in, and Knuckles was unsure if he was still cross with him or not or if he had ever actually been angry or if it was worry and fear or whatever.

"Sounds fun, a shame I missed that."

"You're insane."

Sonic grinned, an actual, wide grin, although it didn't reach his eyes. "Yeah, so I've been told." He looked up and around and shook himself. "I'm gonna get out of here now, and there's no way you can stop me, so lend me a hand."

Somewhat expectedly, Tails was the first to be back on his feet. "I'm all over that plan." He helped Sonic stiffly climb back to his feet and stretch, but it really seemed the hedgehog was mostly in one piece, if still a little pale and shaky.

Turned out Knuckles' knees also held a slight wobble. He was unsure whether to blame the head injury or the adrenaline or both.

Tails was standing between him and Sonic, looking like he was unsure which one of them wouldn't stay on his feet, but at least he didn't say anything. "Okay, which way?"

"Please tell me you got a quick way without water out of here? Somewhere topside, with sunlight, rings and food, at best." Sonic wore a hopeful but kinda fake looking grin again.

Knuckles frowned. A lot of their options had proven no good idea. The best was probably going back most of their way and shortcut to the top then. "We could make it to a staircase that goes straight up to Mushroom Hill. We'd come by one of the rooms that always spawn lots of rings on the way there, but we'll have to go back this way, and it has some water now, obviously."

"I hate the part of "has some water"," Sonic said. "Lead the way."

That seemed a contradictory statement, but then again, this was _Sonic_ , so Knuckles shrugged it off. He could contemplate the hedgehog's insanity once his head was no longer pounding in sync with his pulse.

There were no really other options of way until they came past the broken wall with the picture. Tails carried Sonic whenever the water in the tunnels got more than knee deep. Thankfully the levels had dropped some more from when Tails and Knuckles had come through here, and Knuckles could easily walk without danger now, leaving Tails free to airlift Sonic around. Nobody commented on the wide as possible curves Sonic took around any smaller streams and ponds they came by.

Sonic gaped at the hole in the wall and the few ragged edges that still held some broken jewels left of the corners of what had been the waterfalls picture. "Wait, you broke _this_?"

"Yes." Knuckles shrugged.

"Wow. Sorry."

The echidna blinked. "What are you sorry for? It's not like you told me to break it and –"

Sonic waved an impatient hand. "Yeahyeah. You get to idiotically apologize for the ceiling falling down; I reserve the right to be sorry that you had to break a really pretty picture to save me. Shall we say even?"

Knuckles wanted to say how anything like "even" didn't work like that, but what point was there discussing with Sonic? Some instinctive part of Knuckles was angry at Sonic not taking this seriously, another part of him knew it was an act because he'd felt him tremble with the shock of it just a few minutes ago and if Sonic wanted to play pretend, he probably had every right to do so, the rest of him was sore and sort of light-headed and didn't have the nerve left to deal with Sonic being like that. "Fine," he grumbled, just to say something. "Come on, this way."


	9. The Golden Hour

The Master Emerald's energy was a nagging presence in the back of his mind. It knew he'd been hurt, but he'd have to actively reach for it, and he didn't trust his concussed head with the Emerald. He'd drawn on its power when injured much worse than this, much less in control of his own mind, too, but that had been emergency, when he'd had to fight to protect the Emerald or the island, or when his life had actually been in danger. Neither was the case now. There wasn't any real danger, back when "emergency" would have applied he didn't have the time to spend on trying to focus on the energy, and now the rings he'd promised the others would take care of it well enough, granted they didn't tally here much longer than they already had.

It took them longer than Knuckles had expected to stagger back up the way they'd come and then up another narrow round staircase, but the subdued mood lifted noticeably when he stepped into the room of rings as he liked to call them. There were several on the island, as well as areas with many rings outside in some places. There were enough that their soft glow lit up the room in a golden hue that sent an electric tingle down his spine and made the concerned throb of the Master Emerald pushing at him fall suddenly much more quiet. Knuckles felt lighter without having even touched a ring yet.

A step behind him, Sonic whistled through his teeth and Tails made a sound of surprise. Knuckles turned to his friends just in time to catch the fox all but shoving Sonic into the nearest cluster of rings. The hedgehog's yelp of complaint was drowned out by the rings' _pling_ sounds and the yelp turned into laughter as Sonic continued further into the room, following the lines and lines of rings.

"Are you going to collect them yourself or do I need to push you too?" Knuckles started at Tails' voice so close to him, looked down to find the fox was all but glowering at him. It was a lot less threatening than he probably hoped for, but Knuckles also knew Tails was more dangerous than he looked when angered and took a step out of his reach and into the next best line of rings.

The first pling was near deafeningly loud in his throbbing skull. Knuckles gasped, stumbled forwards into the next ring and then another and another, the hot tingle of gold turning into a rush of relief now.

Stopping after he'd traveled the length of the room, Knuckles turned back for Tails, and now that his head was no longer pounding he found the fox also looked sort of worse for wear. He caught Tails' eyes and waved a hand around. "Enough for everyone. Get some."

"I wasn't hurt," Tails protested. "I don't want to waste – ah!"

A blur of blue all but smacked into the two-tailed fox. Knuckles couldn't keep from laughing as Sonic lifted Tails up, holding him out in front of him to unceremoniously drop him into a near round pattern of rings close to the center of the room. "Gotcha," the hedgehog cheered over the tings and plings of rings resolving. "Feel better?" He grinned at the little fox.

Tails shook himself as if he'd been dunked into water, not gold rings, but his fur was still wet enough to spray droplets of water all around the room anyway.

Sonic shrieked and ducked out of the way.

Tails smugly brushed his fur back down, grinning broadly. "I do now."

Sonic's face from across the room was so hilarious Knuckles laughed until it hurt and he had to go back to pick up another handful of rings to fix it.

When he recovered he made sure to check his friends over and found both of them doing the same.

"You lost all your feathers and glowing marks," Tails noticed, watching Knuckles ruefully, as if that was really something to be sad about when everything could've gone so much worse.

The echidna shrugged. "Yeah."

"I guess now all of us have to get properly dressed up again," Sonic said. The hedgehog's quills still hung lower than normal with the remaining wetness, but he was back to having that energetic bounce to his step that normally meant he was going to get on Knuckles' nerves by being hyperactive and having weird ideas. Now the echidna was insanely relieved to see it.

At Sonic's insistence they stopped to pick a snack of fruits once they were back topside and spent a while just sitting in the sun resting and drying off.

It was late afternoon when they arrived back at the furnished cave near the Temple of Chaos. He ducked inside just briefly to gather the bowl of paint and the box of bands and feathers. The light was better outside and right now probably all of them still felt better with the open sky above their heads.

Tails was holding out his hand for the supplies. "Let me, I remember what it looked like. Okay?" Tails' double namesakes were swishing excitedly behind his back.

Knuckles smiled. "Yeah, sure." It should have been a harder concession to make, painting someone else's face was quite an intimate, familiar thing to do, but it didn't seem odd to let them do it. In any case, he'd have to do their marks in turn.

Tails pulled him to sit down so he could reach his brow properly without having to fly, dabbed a finger into the bowl of paint, already faintly aglow in the light of the late afternoon. Knuckles squinted up at him, but Tails was only looking at his brow, his finger tracing a curve above his left eyebrow, then right, then connecting them with a fresh dab of colour. The sensation was familiar from when he'd drawn the pattern himself earlier today, but it was made all new and strange by the touch not being by his own hand. But, Tails' fingers were swift and sure of their work, his touch light and then lighter still when he drew a line across the still slightly, weirdly tender spot where Knuckles had banged his head earlier.

The Guardian almost jumped and messed up Tails' careful work when Sonic lightly pulled at one of his dreads from behind. The echidna protested, but then he realised what the hedgehog was doing. Drawing the circles back around each dreadlock and putting the bright highlight of paint back on the tips of his spines. That was weird, too, but Knuckles forced himself to relax and sit still so he wouldn't disrupt their work, and suddenly it was kind of soothing, Tails' light fingers ghosting across his brow, drawing patterns never drawn by any hand but Knuckles' own, and the light pull on his spines where Sonic tugged at them as he worked.

He didn't realize he'd closed his eyes until Sonic tugged sharper at his quills to get his attention. "Do you want us to try with the feathers and bands, or do you think we'll mess that up?"

Knuckles opened his eyes to find Tails critically studying the results of his work and Sonic holding the box of feathers. "It takes a bit of practice. I can manage."

"Can we get paint now, too?" Tails practically thrust the bowl into Knuckles' hands and at the Guardian's nod eagerly dropped to sit in front of him.

Knuckles pulled off his gloves. He knew exactly what pattern to use for either of his friends. He gathered up a fingertip of paint to trace a circle on Tails' brow, then added short zig zag lines extending out from it and a larger dot in the middle.

Tails was squinting up at him in concentration. "This isn't the same pattern you have," he noticed.

"No, it's a circle with... stuff," Sonic threw in from where he was leaning over Knuckles' shoulder. "Kinda like a sun?"

It wasn't a bad approximation of the image, so Knuckles nodded.

"What's it mean? It has to mean _something_." Tails' twin tails were wagging lightly behind his back, as always when he was thinking about something.

"The patterns of paint are symbolic for the wearer's role. Their job, you would maybe say. What they are and do. Mine means Guardian."

"Of _course_ it does," Sonic interrupted.

Knuckles threw him a brief Look, but focused back on finishing the last addition to Tails' marking. "This pattern means someone who's... a sage?" That sounded wrong. "A... _Keeper of Knowledge_?" That was closer to a direct translation of the old word, but it too sounded strange when put into his friends' language. "A very learned and knowledgeable person?" He was doing a bad job of explaining this.

But Tails smiled with a touch of flattered embarrassment. "Thank you. I'm honoured."

Sonic was grinning. "I think it fits. You totally _are_ our clever guy with the encyclopedia knowledge. Now do I get a cool glowy picture?"

Knuckles grinned back at him. "If you sit down and hold still long enough."

The hedgehog frowned. "You know, that's a challenge." He plopped himself down next to Tails in front of Knuckles and grinned. "But, I give you twenty seconds."

Knuckles reached back for the bowl. "You know, I can _make_ you hold still for longer."

Sonic raised a brow. " _Try_."

Tails leaped to his feet and stood behind his brother, hands on his shoulders. "Quick, I'll hold him down!"

Knuckles would have almost laughed, but it seemed disrespectful of Tails, who was so much stronger than you thought at first. Sonic was grinning, but not protesting, and Knuckles made sure to thank Tails for his support while he drew a triangle shape, point down, on Sonic's brow, and a couple of arrow shapes to trail across the top of his head and along the sides to where he let them fade into the hedgehog's quills.

"Okay, what am I to be today?" Sonic was, surprisingly, still sitting still when Knuckles finished.

"This is the traditional mark of a warrior. A "defender of the realm"?" It seemed an obvious fit, because no matter what else Sonic was or wasn't, a warrior he was for sure.

"That sounds sufficiently cool, thanks." Sonic was grinning again, a broad and genuine Sonic grin that no longer had even a trace of the cover-up it had been just half an hour ago.

"I would've marked you "reckless idiot", but that isn't a title."

Sonic frowned, and for a second Knuckles thought he'd overstepped, miscalculated, but then the grin was back full force. "We should have marked you our designated gullible knucklehead, but, I hear this is a day for being polite and all."

Knuckles snorted. It was his own fault, he'd started it.

"Can I draw on Sonic's quills, like you have?" Tails was apparently of the opinion that shenanigans would be ignored. "Or am I going to mess up the theme?"

Knuckles shook his head. "No, painted quill tips are for everyone. Go ahead."

And really, if Sonic ended up looking funny, what was the harm? It wasn't that anyone was going to judge, and they were adapting to different species, anyway.

Knuckles ended up braiding feathers into not only his own spines but Sonic's as well, and Tails insisted on wearing a head band so he could tuck a handful of feathers behind each ear. It looked sort of ridiculous, and then Sonic made it worse by deciding that Tails' ear tips and the ends of his tails would serve as substitute for the lack of spines and get painted, too. But none of that mattered, because Tails was laughing, Sonic was still grinning, and sitting and watching the traditional dress-up escalate into something colourful and glowing and stangely alive, Knuckles realised he'd not felt alone and abandoned for a long while now.

* * *

Sonic stopped next to where Knuckles was piling up the first wood to start their fire, placing his own armful of branches and sticks on the ground. "So," he trailed conversationally, "I think you said there was singing?"

Knuckles looked up at him without stopping his efforts to stir up a first flame. "There used to be. But as I said, I only know some of the words, and none of the music. It's not like anyone ever sang them to me." Or if they did, he didn't remember. It felt like a loss, again, a sharp pang in his heart, and he was for a moment mad at Sonic for bringing it up again. Surely he'd heard his first time of mentioning it... and Knuckles had been doing nicely without the reminder,

Sudden heat sparked under his fingers and reflexively he tore his hands away with a hiss of pain, now glaring at the small fire instead of at Sonic.

"Sorry," the hedgehog spoke up at his side again. "Shouldn't have distracted you."

Knuckles grumbled, shaking his hand to cool it down. An anew throb of Chaos pulsed at him from the nearby temple, and unconcussed and not in any danger of messing this up, Knuckles let it. Gradually a light tingle of Chaos washed over the sting of the burn as he accepted the Master Emerald's help to work on starting to heal it, trivial though it was, and it was soothing not only his nerves, but also his mood.

Sonic had not moved, and now he spoke up again. "It's your celebration, if you don't want singing, that's fine, but I brought the guitar, so if it's okay, we can sing some."

The echidna, still crouched next to the fire, stared up at Sonic. How had he known there would be music, theoretically, if they'd come knowing nothing about the Alignment in the first place?

From the edge of the clearing sounded Tails' light laughter and Knuckles turned his head towards him. The little fox was stumbling a bit, the pile of wood in his arms so high he could hardly look over it. "It wasn't hard to guess," he said at Knuckles' puzzled look. "Really, Sonic and I have been to lots of festivals and parties and -" He stumbled over a root in his way he couldn't see, tripped forward.

Next to Knuckles, a swoosh of wind and a blur of blue were the only indicators Sonic had moved, then the hedgehog was suddenly with Tails, and somehow they managed to catch both the fox's weight and his pile of firewood between them.

"Wow, oops!" Tails' eyes were wide now, reflecting the flickering light.

Sonic laughed, pulling some of the wood into his arms and walking back towards the fire. "Nobody told you to bring back the whole forest, little bro," he said, glancing back to the fox and putting down his wood with the rest of their stock.

Tails grinned sheepishly. "Yeah..." He turned back on Knuckles then. "But as I was saying, we've been to plenty of celebrations, and there's always music in some form. Singing, playing instruments, or dancing, too."

"It's one of the things that are the same wherever you go," Sonic nodded. "And it's always fun. So, do you want music?"

Knuckles blinked. While it was true that he knew Sonic played an instrument, it was also a fact that a lot of what Sonic seemed to enjoy in terms of music was more like obnoxious noise to Knuckles' ears... Then again, Tails was smiling, so he was probably looking forward to it, Sonic thought it was fun, and they'd invested thought and effort into actually bringing along things to celebrate an event with him that meant nothing to their culture. It seemed downright discourteous of him to tell them no.

Realising his friends were waiting for an answer, Knuckles forced himself to nod. "Yes. Thank you."

Sonic grinned. "No thing! Be right back!" In another sharp gust of wind, he was gone.

Knuckles stared after him, another time today feeling like this whole celebration was getting away from him entirely.

"Knuckles?"

He shook himself out of the thought and turned to Tails, who had plopped down on one of the logs Knuckles had carried here to sit on around the fire. The two-tailed fox was digging into the baskets of food. "You said some of these are good for roasting?"

Knuckles nodded and went to sit with Tails, explaining the fruits and how to prepare them, secretly glad to have something to do.

Sonic returned just a minute later, carrying the bright red guitar and a small kind of box. He connected the box and guitar with a cable of sorts, then propped the instrument up against one of the logs and joined them in sticking fruits on sticks to roast over the fire first.

By the time they had eaten, the sunlight was the warm orange of the evening. Knuckles shot a glance out towards the horizon, but it would still an hour until sunset, and then some until it would be dark enough to see all the stars.

A soft string of sounds tore him away from looking at the sky and he turned back around to find Sonic sitting on the grass, back against one of the logs, one leg stretched out and the other knee propped up to support the guitar. He was looking down at it, brushing the strings with his fingertips, and the sounds it made were soft, gentle, nothing like the noise and screaming Knuckles had been secretly prepared for. "It's... quiet," he noticed carefully, moving back to sit at the fire, too, adding some fresh wood.

Across of him, Tails settled down next to Sonic, double tails twirling lazily as he watched the hedgehog.

Sonic drew his fingers over the strings in a quicker motion, drawing a chord out of the instrument that floated across the clearing for a moment before he pressed the flat hand down over the strings and silenced them. He looked up at Knuckles and grinned. "We're playing clean, you see, no distortion, and with just a small amp. Fits the campfire mood better, you know."

Knuckles didn't, half of the words meant nothing to him, but Tails was smiling in agreement and so he nodded, too, just so he was doing something.

It seemed enough, because Sonic smiled and turned back to his instrument, pulling softly at the chords again before he started to actually play something, and it, too, was much more quiet than the Guardian would have expected, musing, almost wistful. Knuckles of course didn't know the tune, but Tails obviously did, because he brightened upon hearing it, and after a moment when Sonic started to sing, Tails fell right in with it.

It turned out to be a song about tales of old being retold at a campfire, about stories bringing to live creatures of myth. By the time the second refrain came around, Knuckles found he could recall the melody well enough he was humming along with it without having decided to do so, by the third time he felt like he could quietly sing along with the words, and then Sonic was repeating it again, and Knuckles wasn't sure if it was part of the way it was supposed to be played, but Sonic and Tails were looking at him now, all smiles and shining eyes in the firelight, and he tried to sing along with them.

Sonic did another repetition of the chorus and by now Knuckles was fairly sure he was doing it just so he could sing with them, but when the hedgehog ended the music with a flourishing swipe across the chords, Tails and him were still smiling, and Knuckles caught the pull of a smile on his own face.

"Hey, you learn quick!" Sonic grinned.

"Did you like it?" Tails' twin tails still wagged behind his back, as if in reaction to music that was no longer there.

Knuckles nodded carefully. He'd not imagined he would like Sonic's music, but he did.

Tails smiled brightly. "Wanna do another one?"

Knuckles allowed another nod, and Sonic launched right back into playing, something quicker and more upbeat than the last one that had Tails clapping his hands with the beat.

The echidna sat and listened to his friends singing, songs of travels, of friendship, of funny mishaps or entertaining events, and found himself forgetting the time.

Eventually, Tails had slipped down from the log to lean somewhat into Sonic's side, growing tired with the eventful day perhaps, and the hedgehog was doing the singing alone, a slow, long, musing song again, about the passage of time and the changing of the world that came with it. It was a theme Knuckles would've never put down as something Sonic would think about, but it was beautiful, sometimes melancholy, sometimes hopeful, and it fit the mood of the old songs for an Alignment Knuckles knew only in word and not in tune so strikingly well that he couldn't keep himself from getting caught in the mood of it, gaze getting lost in the flicker of flames in front of him as the hedgehog's chords stirred up a shiver to crawl down his back.

Sonic ended the song in a few gentle notes that seemed to float around them for another moment before gradually fading into the night around.

Knuckles blinked, struggling to pull his mind back to the present. Sonic looked up from his guitar just in time to meet his eyes on accident and the hedgehog flashed a light smile. Even Sonic looked musing now. "Good?"

The Guardian nodded. "Yes," he said quietly, a louder word feeling like it would disrupt the mood. "It's very... fitting, for the occasion..."

Sonic smiled, drawing an arm around an increasingly sleepy looking Tails. "I was hoping it would be."

Knuckles inclined his head, looked down at the fire, back to his friends again. "Thank you."

"Welcome." Sonic smiled, placing his guitar to the side and stretching both legs out in front of him.

For a few minutes, it was quiet, but a pleasant sort of it. Between them, the fire slowly burned down, and overhead, the sky was gradually turning properly orange. Knuckles moved to stand up, and Sonic gently jostled the little fox.

Tails still looked sleepy as he disentangled himself from being curled into Sonic's side and the log of wood, but then he seemed to remember the events. "Oh, is it starting?"

"Not quite yet." Knuckles smiled. "Now we're going to watch the sun set." Part of Knuckles had looked forward to that since the morning.

Tails smiled, stretching. "That's nice! Is it tradition, too?"

"Sort of. I'll show you, come on."

The little fox fell right in step with him, and also Sonic didn't take long to follow. "I like sunsets," he noticed conversationally. "It's cool how different they are in different places, too."

Knuckles turned to his blue friend. "I didn't picture you the sitting and watching the sun set type?"

Sonic shrugged, raising a semi-complaining brow. "I don't only run around seeking thrills all the time," he claimed, then his arms folded at Tails' giggle and the green eyes sought the fox. "You _know_ I don't!"

Tails grinned, waving an appeasing hand at his brother. "Yeah, I know."

Pacified, Sonic turned back to Knuckles. "You know, I like seeing awesome places and cool sights. There's so many beautiful spots all over the world, and I get to see them, and they're really different depending on weather and time of year or of day. And in some places, I can run fast enough to see a sunset for a very long time." He smiled, almost wistfully so, maybe as close as Sonic would come to it.

Knuckles smiled back, suddenly aware not only he was sharing things private to him today. This quieter side of Sonic was one he didn't carry around for the world to see. It was obvious Tails got to see it, and Knuckles thought he should value the privilege to be included perhaps.

It didn't take his friends long to catch up to the direction Knuckles had taken through the forest, and Tails poked at his arm. "The secret! Do you now tell us what you did this morning?"

Admittedly it had been closer to noon than proper morning, but Knuckles could let that pass. "I suppose." He grinned at Tails.

Also Sonic had perked up and didn't come up with any shiny rock comments this time.

Knuckles led the others into the temple and to the top of the stairs, then he turned back around. He smiled. The direction he'd set was proving quite accurate.

Tails was the first to follow Knuckles' gaze to where the low sun was sitting in direct line from the stairs and he gasped. "It's gonna set right there! Is this a sun temple then?"

Knuckles moved to sit on the topmost tread. "Not exactly. My people used to have sun temples in the past, down on the surface, even before the Floating Island floated."

"Oh, history lesson!" Sonic dropped to sit next to Knuckles, but he didn't sound like he was making fun of him. More like when he was going to indulge Tails and listen to an explanation of how some device worked.

Tails wasn't sitting down, instead he was almost excitedly pointing out the pillars ahead of the stairway. "I know that! Some Echidna temples are constructed kind of like observatories, lined up astronomically, so that the sun would set in the middle at the solstices, and behind specific points to the sides at spring and autumn equinoxes." He turned to Knuckles for confirmation.

The Guardian nodded. "True. How do you know that?"

"I did research!" Tails grinned, and beside Knuckles, Sonic laughed.

"He did. You should've seen the graphs and flow charts!"

"Flow charts." Knuckles stared. He thought he knew what a flow chart was, at least he had a vague idea, but he couldn't imagine how to apply it to this topic.

"Sure! They're useful," Tails insisted.

Sonic somehow managed to wink at Knuckles and pull a grimace at the same time. " _Very_ ," he said, and it was clear he meant the opposite.

Knuckles laughed, watched Tails' frown form at it, and pointed back down towards the pillars. "It's not actually a sun temple. The pillars are too far apart to match." He stretched out his legs in front of himself. "This is a Floating Island. It moves around all the time."

"And the distance between the pillars would be different everywhere." Tails at least had caught on.

"The island also turns apparently," Sonic added casually from the sidelines, lazily soaking up the light of the slowly setting sun, but proving he was and had been listening all along, and more attentively than you'd give him credit for.

Knuckles nodded. "It was tradition on the surface to celebrate the beginnings of the seasons as the sun would indicate them at the temples. That became impossible on a floating island. Unless you'd bring it to the same place every time and properly turned it into position, you cannot have a temple like this on a constantly moving island."

Tails was studying the Emerald shrine and the circle of pillars around it, meant for the Chaos Emeralds. "So, your people improvised by using another temple that was there anyway?"

"Yes, the Guardian can steer the Island, so it would be lined up properly for solstices or equinoxes, no matter where it is at the time." Knuckles leaned back slightly, feeling the Emerald's light warmly cascade down his back. "I find it helps track the seasons. Remember the time. It's not a new season now, but, I thought it kinda is, so."

"Huh. Makes sense." Sonic smiled. "And it's a nice view like that."

On Knuckles' other side, Tails hummed his agreement. They were right, too. It was a good view from up here. The sun had turned into a ball of deep orange, a disc of fiery amber sinking into the forest beyond the temple, painting the tips of the clouds visible faintly in the distance a bright yellow, while the sky around was turning purple and pink.

Knuckles watched the last colours of daylight spread across the sky and flow over the forest and buildings. He'd pictured himself sitting here, it was actually one of the few items on his list of plans that had worked out, even if not entirely as he'd expected. Nothing truly had, but it seemed for the better. It was a time for change, for new beginnings, was it an omen he wasn't spending it alone as he would have? Sonic and Tails and other friends they had weren't new in Knuckles' life, but nothing common, either. Nothing he should take for granted. Something to give more value to, perhaps.

He thought of Tails, who'd pulled him out of the wild current, and the sharp fear for Sonic's life that had pushed him and Tails through the tunnels. Definitely not something to take for granted indeed. Easily lost, and well worth guarding.

Tails dropped to sit at Knuckles' other side, the movement in his peripheral vision enough to distract him from his thoughts. The echidna threw a look aside, but Tails wasn't looking back. He'd leaned his elbows on his knees and was watching the sun set, near perfectly ahead of them.

Knuckles followed his friend's gaze. The altar wasn't high enough to see all the way to the island's edge and from here, the sun was sinking into the forest instead of into the clouds or behind the surface's horizon far below. Knuckles liked the far view, but he liked to sit on the stairs even better. Here, the sun was warm on his face and the Emerald's green glow was just as warm on his back. It had settled after the commotion of earlier and was more calm and at ease now than it had been in days.

Sitting between the orange and blue-green light, with his friends at either side, Knuckles breathed in the calm and warmth and wondered if this really was the first time in days he'd felt truly relaxed. Surely it couldn't be.

Even Sonic was quiet, for minutes, after the sun had disappeared from sight, and when he made sound then, it wasn't a wisecrack comment, but an angry stomach growl again. Hadn't they just eaten?

Tails laughed, and pointed out the same thing.

Sonic shrugged, his stomach giving another rumble. "It's been an exciting day, and I have a fast metabolism. I'll just grab a snack. We still have snacks, right Knuckles? Can we quickly go and snatch something by way of dessert?"

Knuckles found a grin back on his face even as he turned to the hedgehog. "I was having a moment here," he complained.

Sonic actually managed to look abashed for a second or two. "Sorry, I'll try starving more quietly from now on."

"You can do anything quietly?" Knuckles tried for a disbelieving frown. He knew Sonic could, rarely, do quiet, and he just had been quiet for minutes, but what fun was in admitting that?

Sonic grinned. "I sleep sometimes."

"You sleep all the time, at any time of day." The red echidna leaned further backwards, closer to the Emerald's warmth, now that the warmth of daylight was gone.

Next to him, Sonic shrugged. "I guess. But I'm quiet then."

Tails was climbing to his feet. "You snore," he said.

Sonic blinked, ears twitching. "Well, _you_ talk technobabble in your sleep."

"He does that when awake, too. I don't see a difference." Somewhat reluctantly, Knuckles followed Tails' example and pulled himself up. Sonic was kind of right; they could indulge in something for dessert, and he'd picked a place to stay the night already, but they'd have a more comfortable way through the forest while there was still a little bit of light.

Tails was pretending to grumble. It really wasn't very convincing, because he was struggling not to smile through it. "It's not babbling, you undereducated freaks, you."

Sonic pointed at Knuckles. "Three languages! Weird symbols!"

Tails grinned. "So, what do you have to say in your own defense then?"

"Um." Sonic frowned. "I can, uh, multitask! I can run and eat chili dogs and annoy Knux at the same time."

There really was no contesting that. Knuckles laughed. "I concur, he totally can." He started down the stairs. "Come on, we need to feed our genius here so he doesn't starve before the end of this cycle."

"That would suck, so close to the goal." Sonic laughed, following behind, bouncing on the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did a kind of concept [picture](https://www.deviantart.com/speedy1236/art/Dressed-Up-858281337) of the gang all dressed up fancy.


	10. Rising

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started writing this story, I was aware it was a super self-indulgent fic, and while I know a few others with similar taste in stories, I didn't expect it to gather a larger audience or click with many people. I was a little floored by how many of you seemed to genuinely like even the parts I thought wouldn't be for most people. So, it's been a real joy having all of you along for the ride! Thank you all for reading. :-)
> 
> There are further notes at the end, but the note box has a character limit, and they didn't fit, so they're not boxed. I apologize for the inconvenience and hope AO3's mods will consider making the note boxes bigger in the future, in case anyone else also wants to share their story background research geek fest. ;-)

**Rising**

Knuckles watched Sonic pick out a handful of fruits. He offered some to the others, but Knuckles wasn't hungry anymore and Tails was back to looking rather tired. Knuckles watched him. It was easy to forget how much younger he was, and it had been a long day.

Sonic was still munching on his dessert, but he'd followed Knuckles' gaze. A soft smile ghosted across his face. "We ready here, then? I recall being told the big event happens just a bit after sunset."

Tails blinked and the double tails were suddenly back to animated wagging. "I need to get my telescope!" Apparently suddenly awake again, he made to dash off, stopped after only a few steps, turned back around, now to face Knuckles. "Um. If that's okay, with you, I mean?"

Knuckles blinked, again not quite sure what was going on. "What?"

Tails was coming back to stand next to him. "When we figured it's about an astronomical event, I decided to bring my telescope. I was looking forward to observing it. With the high altitude and non-existent light pollution, observation conditions are perfect on Angel Island. It's not a huge telescope, but we'll be able to see planetary rings and several moons of the individual planets." He frowned, studying Knuckles. "But I didn't think, maybe it's blasphemy to you or something? But your people knew they were planets, and -" He shrugged, timidly looking up at Knuckles now.

The echidna smiled. "Yes, we know they are planets, moving around the sun like our planet. Just very, very far away." Automatically, his eyes trailed over to skim the dimming horizon.

"I can bring'em closer, sort of," Tails ventured. "If you're up for it."

Why wouldn't he? Knuckles didn't quite see why there would be a problem, but it seemed thoughtful of Tails to ask all the same. "It's fine. Go ahead."

"Yes! Thank you!" He was traded a bright grin, blue eyes shining, then Tails dashed off. He was already a good bit away down the trail when he shouted something that Knuckles didn't quite catch but that made Sonic, just slightly more downhill, chuckle and grin.

"Yeah, right." The hedgehog turned to face Knuckles. "I really better help him carry his stuff; if anything gets dropped and damaged I won't hear the end of it for years." Knuckles made to follow him, but Sonic lifted a hand and shook his head. "I got it. You go find a good spot to view everything." He was gone in a flash of dark blue before Knuckles could think of a reply.

He shrugged to himself, in lack of anyone else's presence, and first of all made sure their campfire was completely extinguished. There was a cliff slightly uphill that he'd decided as his viewing spot already days ago, but if they were leaving for real now, they couldn't leave the fire on.

It took only a few minutes until his friends returned, Tails carrying a long tubular thing that was almost as tall as himself, Sonic lugging along something thin and silvery that Knuckles wasn't sure what to make of, but that looked a lot less heavy than whatever little Tails was struggling to carry.

Knuckles traded Sonic a frown for this obviously lazy division of load, but even before he could open his mouth, Sonic was laughing and shaking his head. "Hey, don't look at me like that; he refuses to let anyone else handle that one."

"It's really sensitive and expensive equipment! It doesn't take well to supersonic jostling." Tails actually was almost hugging that weird big tube.

Knuckles held out a hand. "Well, I don't do any supersonic jostling to important items."

The little fox frowned at him for a moment, then handed the thing over. Knuckles carefully lifted it up to rest on his shoulder, making sure to be gentle, but hold it securely if it was apparently so important to Tails.

Next to him, Sonic was spluttering. "You don't trust _me_ to handle your expensive equipment, but you trust _him_?! What did I _ever_ do to your stuff, Tails?!"

The fox gave him a weird look and shrugged. "Do you want an alphabetical list or one by order of magnitude?" Sonic just stared, and Knuckles fought to swallow a chuckle at the hedgehog's indignant look. Tails continued before either of them could say anything, though. "And technically, I don't trust him to _handle_ it. I trust him to _carry_ it."

"Fine," Sonic grumbled, holding the shiny bundle of sticks or whatever it was he was carrying out at Tails. "You can carry those. I'm gonna bring my own stuff."

Tails didn't protest against being handed the things, and he watched Sonic pick up his guitar with an expression that was amused rather than anything like mad. "Oh, now I'm not allowed to carry your guitar?"

"It's an expensive, sensitive piece of equipment," Sonic insisted seriously, cradling the instrument in his hold.

Knuckles wasn't sure whether to laugh or stare or shake his head at the antics, but suddenly both Sonic and Tails broke out laughing, and decided the matter for him.

* * *

"There! There it is!" Tails pointed up into the darkening sky, near shouting in excitement.

Weeks ago, Knuckles had felt some of that excitement, then he'd lost it, and now it was like Tails' shouting was all it took to suddenly bring it back full force as the first of the Five peeked out of the purple glow of dusk as a bright spark of silvery white. The first "star" to appear, because it was easily the brightest in the entire sky. "I see it!"

Tails had stopped gesturing, but was still grinning wildly. "It's actually late today. Sometimes you can see it during sunset already! That's why it gets nicknamed Evening Star."

Knuckles nodded. "We call it that, too." He found himself smiling at Tails. "But in some places and seasons, it can rise late in the night and stay into the morning."

Tails was nodding back at him, but somewhere to the side, Sonic groaned. "Now I've got _two_ geeks..."

Next to Knuckles, Tails was frowning, but the echidna was faster this time. "Knowing the stars is important. You can never be lost anywhere if you know to read the sky."

Sonic shrugged, but he was grinning, too. "I could say something about how often some of us here have gotten lost sky or no sky, but, party day." The hedgehog's eyes returned to gazing up into the sky, too. "And it sure is a bright one."

Tails seemed pacified enough, and Knuckles' own eyes had already focused back on the Evening Star, now at full sparkling brightness. Darkness was falling quickly now, the purple fading into a dark blue. The eastern sky was already fully black. Soon the next planet should become visible.

It took only minutes until the sky was fully dark, proudly showing off all of the planets as well as a myriad of stars. Unexpectedly his friends were mostly quiet and Knuckles was able to observe the Five all lined up in the sky, as he'd seen in the old drawings predicting the event. Like bright shiny pearls on an invisible string.

Tails was whispering something about extraordinarily clear skies and observation conditions to Sonic, who ushered him over to where the telescope had been set up. For a moment Knuckles wondered if _Sonic_ of all people was trying to make sure he was left alone to enjoy a moment of quiet, but once Tails was busy playing with his telescope Sonic too ended up just standing and watching the sky, and Knuckles wondered if maybe in some way Sonic too liked a short moment to stargaze by himself in peace. He'd claimed to enjoy sunsets, maybe this was similar? It couldn't last long, but Knuckles would take what silence he could get here.

The silence actually lasted another minute until Sonic came to stand next to Knuckles. "Tails is right; your sky is epic."

"It's the high altitude and lack of light pollution," Tails said, still fiddling with the telescope. Turned out the weird silvery sticks made up the stand for the thing.

"Or it's Ancient Echidna Floating Island magic."

Knuckles finally looked down again properly, raising a brow at the hedgehog for this statement.

Sonic caught his eyes and shrugged. "No?"

The Guardian opened his mouth to say… _something_ , but Sonic caught him off with a wave of his hand.

"Don't give away your secrets! Keep the magic alive!"

Knuckles laughed.

Behind his telescope, Tails unsuccessfully tried to hide a yawn.

Next to Knuckles, Sonic grinned, but said nothing.

The Guardian gestured up at the sky. "I'm going to stay and watch until they set, but you don't have to if you're tired."

Tails turned to look over at him and Sonic warily, but the hedgehog shook his head. "Nah. Once in a lifetime event, this, right? For culture _and_ science." He looked between Knuckles and Tails. "We can sleep tomorrow."

Tails was smiling again, one hand resting easily on top of his telescope. "Technically," he quipped, "they set tomorrow."

Knuckles frowned. Tails had seemed so well informed, and to him this was _science_ , how could he make that mistake? "They set in a few hours, well before sunrise," he corrected carefully.

Tails blinked in the darkness. "Oh. Oh! No, wait, that's not what I meant." He laughed. "You see, in our calendar, the new day starts at midnight."

That seemed totally stupid. And random, too. "Why?"

Sonic broke out laughing. "Good question!"

Tails shrugged. "Someone defined it this way? It had to start somewhere." He studied Knuckles. "When does a new day start in your calendar?"

"At first light of dawn. The dimming of the stars."

"That makes a ton more sense," Sonic decided. "Can we adopt his calendar, Tails? I mean, it has everything. Holidays full of excitement, _science holidays_ celebrating _planets_ , and days start in the _morning_. You have to admit it's clearly superior."

Knuckles didn't bother pointing out that what Sonic so casually termed "excitement" had damn near killed him, or that it had not actually been part of the holiday. Sonic didn't allow it to ruin his day, and Knuckles could recognise a gift when he saw one. At least, he hoped he could.

Turned out he didn't need to point anything out, because Tails did. "The excitement was my fault. I wanted to do sight seeing."

Sonic groaned. "Chaos. Bro." He flicked a glance at Knuckles, apparently noticed his expression and amended the exasperated address to "Guys! That's not what I meant and don't pretend you don't know, because we've been through this already. Come on, it's an island-wide holiday. No guilt trips allowed. All guilt trips have been officially cancelled. Only fun stuff allowed. Good? Good." He pointed at Tails' telescope. "You've been hogging that thing. Come on, if we're staying up long as this beautiful Alignment lasts, you may as well show me some cool science. You said planet rings? Let us see some planet rings." He patted at Knuckles' shoulder. "I'm sure Knux here would love to see them too, right?"

Knuckles nodded, and not even entirely to humour his friends. He remembered Tails' words about the telescope. "Maybe some moons, too?", he ventured carefully. He didn't even know other planets had moons before.

Tails beamed. "Coming right up!" He bent over his telescope to make some adjustments. "Here, come see!" He was looking at Knuckles when he said it, but turned out in the few seconds that had passed, Sonic had moved to stand right behind Tails and his telescope.

"He'll have to wait; I'm obviously first in line." Sonic was grinning again, pointing out their positions.

"Sonic!" Tails frowned in protest.

Unexpectedly Knuckles found a grin tugging at the corners of his own mouth. "It's fine, Tails. I can wait for a moment." He turned to Sonic. "Just, you know, don't hog the telescope, hedgehog."

Sonic laughed, and tried to cover it up by bending to gaze into the viewing part. He whistled through his teeth. "You can see several of them at once!"

Knuckles flicked a gaze up at where they sat so very close together in the sky. "Obviously?"

Tails giggled. "He's not all wrong, you know," he said. "A telescope has a very narrow field of view; normally you can't see several planets in it at the same time. Even now I can't fit all five. I've got three of them right now."

"Actually, one is about to escape," Sonic said. "The red one is slipping out at the top."

"Oh. Already?" Tails pushed Sonic away from the telescope. "Let me."

Sonic laughed. "Sure."

Tails adjusted something. "Here, good to go again." He stepped back from his telescope, and made a point of standing between it and Sonic now, waving at Knuckles. "Here, your turn."

"I wasn't going to keep him," Sonic argued.

Knuckles grinned as he made his way over, but whatever he'd have thought up to say to that was forgotten about when he bent to look through the ocular and instead of the stars he'd expected he saw one overly large reddish star-like dot and two much bigger - circles. Discs of light? Planets, for real, not stars. Small, obviously very far away, but this looked closer to what Mobius looked from space then what a star looked like in the sky.

One was mostly orange and red with some whites, wrapped around it in what seemed to be stripes. He could spot several stars, actual pinprick of light stars, very close to it, too, shining a bright white to offset the diffuse orange glow surrounding the planet.

The other was more uniform in colour, a pale yellowish orange, and as Tails had promised, it had rings surrounding it. They circled it at a sharp angle, and they were throwing an actual shadow onto the planet.

"Wow," he mumbled.

"See the rings?" Tails was smiling; he could hear that.

"Yeah. They're much bigger than the planet! They have to be huge! Can you walk on them?" He could imagine that, walking along the rings, floating in space high above their mother planet, a vantage point to look down and out into space at the same time.

"No." The smiling tone was still there. "They're not solid, it just seems that way from here because we're far away and this is only a small telescope with relatively low resolution. They're dust and small rocks floating in space. But it's a nice thought. I think you'd have a great view if you could walk on them."

"Maybe we could hop from rock to rock," Sonic suggested.

"I think they're a lot farther apart than you can jump," Tails said. "Also, there's no air."

"I could go super."

Knuckles frowned. "To hop around on space rock rings?" It wasn't quite what you'd use the sacred Emeralds for.

"Come on, tell me you wouldn't want to. Just a little bit?"

Still looking at the small round of the planet and its rings, the imagined image of the view from there still clear and fresh in his mind, the red echidna sighed. "A little maybe, yeah."

Tails moved to stand next to him. "Have you seen the moons?"

Knuckles narrowed his eyes. He could see the three planets, the rings, the few stars. "No."

"They'll look like stars, small dots of light? They're much much smaller than the planets and too far away to resolve into discs with this telescope. They stay dots. You should see three or four?"

"Ah. I see dots. How do I know if they're stars or moons?"

"They're moons," Tails said with certainty. "The planets are very bright, and it's a very small field of view. You couldn't see stars in there like this. Also, I know they're moons."

"So it's basically down to whether or not you believe Tails," Sonic quipped.

Knuckles made point to more properly study the moons. "Why wouldn't I? I don't think he's ever told me any nonsense."

"And I have?" Sonic didn't sound mad at all.

"All the time," Knuckles said seriously.

Sonic laughed but didn't argue.

The Guardian went back to concentrating on the planets and their rings and moons. He'd known before that they were planets, but it wasn't the same as seeing them here, little balls floating in the black of space, obviously round, with moons of their own, and strange rings surrounding them, with shadows falling on their surfaces. Not small dots of light, near indistinguishable from the vast amount of stars in the sky. These were worlds, like their world. Sure, not quite the same, and far away, but worlds still. Actual worlds circling the same sun as their world. If there was someone living there, and looking through a telescope of their own, Mobius would be such a tiny, slightly blurry round shape to _their_ eyes.

He stepped back from the telescope feeling small and like something had been shifted sharply into perspective. He threw a glance up into the sky, to where the planets were back to being just star-like dots seeing them with his own eyes.

Neither Sonic nor Tails said anything to him as he took a few steps further away, wanting some space to think. They talked quietly among themselves and took turns at the telescope for a couple of minutes while Knuckles stared up into the sky, endless and unreachable above them.

Maybe it wasn't unfitting to start a new era with the reminder that you're rather insignificant in a cosmic perspective? He thought of some of the old philosophy writings he'd read over the past weeks, and wondered what those philosophers of old would have made of actually seeing those far way planets they used to track in the skies.

He was interrupted in his musings and watching the stars when Tails near smacked into him from the right, wrapping both arms around him in a crushing hug. "Happy new cycle, Knuckles. Thank you for having us."

Knuckles lifted one awkward hand to rest on Tails' back, staring down at the bangs that were tickling his nose. Tails was getting this all wrong. He was the one who should be grateful. He didn't invite them to have them over for the occasion. They invited themselves and probably saved this holiday from being all gloomy and dull. "Um.."

"Tails, let Knux breathe, will ya?" Sonic too had abandoned the telescope and even in the dim light Knuckles could see his grin.

Tails gave Knuckles a last squeeze and stepped back with an embarrassed giggle. "Sorry."

The red echidna shook his head. "No. Thank _you_ , Tails." He waved an arm at Sonic in what hopefully came across as an inclusive, inviting gesture. "And Sonic. Really, I -... This meant a lot to me."

Sonic was right next to him and Tails the next time Knuckles blinked. He barely kept himself from jumping. You'd think he'd be used to how fast Sonic moved.

Instinct was to glare at the hedgehog and complain about being startled, but at this close distance, the starlight was enough to see the kind of smile that was on Sonic's face. "You're welcome," the blue hedgehog said, throwing one arm each left and right around Tails and Knuckles.

Knuckles let him.

Sonic's smile was still at full force, eyes shining in the starlight. "Really, we're glad we came."

Tails was nodding to confirm this statement, Knuckles was sure entirely for his benefit, because Sonic certainly didn't need reassurances. As if to prove him right, when the fox spoke up, it was with a soft voice and he was addressing Knuckles, not Sonic. "Are you still sad there are no other echidnas here today?"

The Guardian frowned. It was a serious question and he gave it a moment of thought before he answered. Unlike expected, he was spending these first hours of this new cycle not alone, but in the company of friends, of allies who'd fought his battles with him. He'd fought their battles, too, but it was not fighting together they came for but camaraderie and friendship, and the Guardian found he could not imagine being here with anyone else.

With Sonic, who'd brought back the Master Emerald when Knuckles had been unable to do so himself, after Knuckles had been nothing but an enemy to him and Tails. Sonic who came over to race him around the island on foot or on Gear, to spar with him, who teased and pushed his buttons and got on his nerves, but who'd be at his side if he'd need him to. Sometimes even if he didn't know it, or if he didn't want him there.

With Tails, who forgave Knuckles' past transgressions as easily as Sonic, who was learned and wise beyond his years in ways Knuckles would never know. Tails, full of courage and bravery veiled by his gentle soul and innocent curiosity.

Knuckles looked down at Tails, at Sonic, the hedgehog's arm still loosely around his shoulders, back to the bright glow of the Five in the sky, and thought if any of his people were still out there somewhere, they'd have to measure up to quite a standard. "No," he finally answered. "Not at all."

Tails beamed, teeth flashing white in the starlight, and Sonic tightened the hold around his shoulders for just a moment before letting him go.

Knuckles wondered if any further words of thanks would be expected of him, or in any way appropriate, but Tails silently gravitated back to his telescope and Sonic casually strolled a few feet away to stand with his head tilted back to watch the stars. After a moment Knuckles followed his example, allowing his eyes to trail from the bright light of the Five further up, along the glow of the Milky Way, and then aimlessly from star to star, to wherever his eyes wanted to go.

For several minutes it was quiet, then, predictably, it was Sonic who broke the silence. "You know, the sky looks epic up here, but, this is basically a new year. I think fireworks would be neat. We should have brought fireworks."

"We didn't know," Tails pointed out reasonably.

Sonic made a hmm sound. "Well, next time."

Knuckles snorted and looked back down to his friends just in time to catch Tails' expression at that statement. "Sonic, it's gonna be over 700 years until the next one. Only 300 more after that, though, so, we can catch two Alignments within 300 years if we live another thousand."

Sonic laughed. "We could build a time machine."

"By _we_ you mean _I_." Tails wandered over to where Sonic was.

The hedgehog shrugged. "Well, yeah. I doubt we'll be much help. Still, a cool idea, right?"

"Travel to the future to stargaze?" Tails didn't sound like he really thought this was a bad idea.

"There are probably worse reasons," Knuckles agreed.

"Yeah, I guess," Tails admitted. "Like, I dunno, whatever reasons Eggman would travel to the future for."

"He'd probably bring enough explosives for fireworks, though," Sonic pointed out. "Eggy's stuff is always explosive."

Tails waved vaguely towards his telescope. "Well, I'm sorry I only brought harmless science."

Sonic threw an arm around the fox, pulling him firmly into his side. "We forgive you," he declared graciously.

Tails laughed. "Thank you. And really," he waved a hand towards the sky, "this is pretty festive as is."

Sonic hummed an agreement. "I didn't say it isn't. Just that fireworks would be cool. But, no fireworks. I get it." He tilted his head back anyway to look at the stars again, and Knuckles had a sudden idea that put a grin on his face none of the others saw because nobody was looking at him.

He waited until his friends had turned back to their sky watching, then he closed his eyes and reached out for the never truly dormant connection that tied Guardian and Master Emerald. He felt along it, let his mind sink just a fraction into the familiar energy, then he gave it the slightest pull.

As when he'd steered the Island around into position earlier, the energy came easily and calmly, responding to his own calm mood. In a fight, when there was danger and a rush of anger or fear would boil in his veins, control wasn't usually easy. The grip was, it was a permanent link. The trouble would always be control, because even the Master was Chaos in nature, and if Knuckles' mind was in for massive destruction of whatever was in his way, the Chaos would all too easily comply. The struggle would be to take not too much.

This was different. There was no danger, the Emerald was calm, he was calm. This was like steering the Island, or like the training he'd do frequently, for his control and keeping a good feel for using the energy for something specific.

The amount he'd pulled towards himself was tiny, probably less than would be contained in a Gold Ring, and it tingled giddily under his fingertips.

He kept it there for a second, testing his hold, then he opened his eyes and let go, opened his fist, throwing the fingertip-ful of energy up above their heads, giving it a last push of the mildest urgency.

It responded by pulsing up bright whitish green. Sonic and Tails started, staring up just in time to see the scattering sparks of Chaos rain down around them.

Knuckles closed his hand back into a fist, drawing back to his side and the light tingle returned to him just a moment after the glow faded from view.

Both of his friends were staring at him.

"What was that?" Tails looked puzzled.

This time it was Sonic who was a step ahead, who'd probably felt the shiver of nearby Chaos as it fell around them, but also the hedgehog's eyes were wide. "Okay, _who_ are you, and what have you done to Knuckles."

Tails took to staring at Sonic now, and Knuckles felt a chuckle form in his throat. Sonic's words didn't even sound like a question.

Apparently the blue hedgehog thought he needed to elaborate anyway, flicking gazes between Tails and Knuckles. "The Knuckles _I_ know isn't going to use his holy as heck shiny rock for making fireworks." He studied Knuckles. "Or have you been fooling us all this time, Knux? Huh? Are you playing around making pretty Chaos sparkles up here soon as nobody's looking?" Now _that_ teasing tone and grin was something Knuckles was familiar with.

"Would I now?" He grinned back at the hedgehog, twisting the miniscule amount of energy in his grasp around before setting it back alight and making it twirl around Sonic in a spiral of green glow.

The hedgehog reached out for it, and Knuckles brought his hand down and closed his fist just in time to stop his friend from interrupting the tiny, fragile strand of energy.

Sonic glared at him as the glow vanished, folding his arms. "And he doesn't even share his toys," he complained in Tails' general direction.

"It's not a toy," Knuckles found himself saying automatically.

Sonic laughed. "No? Looks like playing to me."

Obviously Tails was on Sonic's side. "It does," he noticed. "But it's really awesome, too. And don't tell me you've never done it before. I've seen both of you try new Chaos stuff, and it doesn't look like that."

"It's normally done for training," Knuckles explained. "A lot of Chaos Control works on instinct, but instinct isn't accurate. It's the control part you need to train. Small exercises like this have been used by Guardians and Chaos Controllers already in the Old Times. The point is to take just a tiny amount of energy and manipulate that." He focused back on the tingle of Chaos under his skin and lightly pulled at it. Under his concentrated look, a small ball of green shaped above his open palm, glowing like a soft emerald fire.

"Cool! Can I do that?" Sonic poked at it, and Knuckles had to tighten his hold on the energy as some of it would have gravitated toward the hedgehog's pointing finger.

"Probably. It takes some patience to practice, though." The echidna grinned at his friend.

As expected, Sonic pulled a face. "We don't have time for that now." He tilted his head and grinned at Knuckles. "Come on, _party_ , remember. I hear someone here can do nice sparkly fireworks to honour the occasion."

Knuckles grinned back, and threw his glowing ball up to soundlessly explode above their heads.

_The End_

* * *

Speedy's note: A bit on this story's background, for my fellow geeks. Feel free to ignore, but I wanted to give context for those interested. If you don't like history and science, please run for your life now, because I did _Research_ and intend to share it.

The Echidna cultural elements (calendaric system, script, use of astronomy, etc) mentioned or described in this story are partly based on/inspired by ancient Mayan culture.

The connection between Mayas and Sonicverse Echidnas seems obvious if you look at elements from Sonic Adventure in particular (Tikal is named after a Mayan city, Lost World is the name given to another archeological site, the temple pyramids in Sonic Adventure largely resemble Classical Mayan temple architecture, etc). Environments in Sonic 3 and Knuckles have more of a general ancient ruins theme, but you can only show so much in 8-bit graphics. Sonic Team also visited Chichén Itzá when they worked on Sonic Adventure. There are photos of [the developers at the ruins](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/sonic/images/1/1b/Nanbei7.jpg)… as well as a picture with a [Sonic and Knuckles plushy in front of a temple](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8rhyqFXsAIsTkg?format=jpg&name=360x360). Here's [a little Sonic atop a temple overlooking the jungle towards another temple](https://www.sonicstadium.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/plush-adventure.jpg).

This story is however not in any way an accurate representation of what Mayan culture was like, nor was it intended to be. I'm not Mayan; I can't do representation. I took a good deal of assorted random knowledge I already had, things that can be learned from books and off Wikipedia and used them to inspire parts of what was to become the fictional echidna culture of this story. I stayed close to my source in some parts (the writing system for example), but I also freely invented a lot of things and changed others. It's just a story, after all, written for fun.

I was interested in finding out more about Mayan languages, there are actually a lot of them surviving today, but they're endangered minority languages. I couldn't find any comprehensive online dictionary or anything, so that was difficult, too. The bit of Spanish I know actually helped, but not much. The words now in the story ("Sky" and "Blue") are Yucatec Mayan, as taken from Wikipedia's Incubator list of articles written in it. If you want to look, language code is "yua"; [here's the Sky article](https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/yua/Ka%27an). I thought it cool to see the language written in Latin script, so one can at least imagine what it'll sound like.

One thing I didn't change a lot is the astronomy. The Classic Maya practiced very accurate astronomy, perhaps unrivaled in accuracy at the time. The astronomically correct temples are a real thing. They observed all five planets visible to the naked eye as well as the moon and stars. Also the Maya Codices have a lot of mentions of astronomy. Recurring celestial events were considered connected to events in the living world and astronomy was used to predict for example upcoming eclipses, which were believed to be potentially dangerous times.

Unlike my Echidnas in this story, the Maya didn't have a calendar that included planetary alignments. I made that one up. The actual Maya has two different calendars in use, one for a period of 260 days (given the name "Tzolk'in" by Mayanists), and another that had the duration of a solar year ("Haab'"), when these two coincided (what happened about every 52 years), it was the completion of a Calendar Round, a reason for celebration and festivities, which in turn very loosely inspired the overall theme of the holiday in this fic.

For long term counting of times, the Maya used the Long Count Calendar, which counts the time continuously from a day zero. The 2012 Maya apocalypse hoax was caused by people misunderstanding the Long Count Calendar. On December 21st 2012 (Long Count date _13\. 0. 0. 0. 0)_ , the 13th b'ak'tun was completed; it was kind of a millennium, not the end of the world.

Rituals and traditions mentioned in this fic are of my own design. It is believed dancing and body painting were part of commonly practiced rituals though, and like many cultures, the Maya created artwork, murals and writing based on important and historical events.

The celestial event I used as basis for this fic is properly called a _grouping of planets_. As Tails points out in the beginning, two are called a conjunction and that's pretty common. More than two are called groupings, and are exceedingly rare the more planets you add. I couldn't find any info on if the Maya observed or cared about them, but other ancient societies did. The Chinese might have based the start of their calendar on such an event. For those few other nerds actually interested, here's [a paper on ancient observations of groupings involving five planets](http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1994JBAA..104..293D/0000293.000.html). I went with "anything more separated than ten degrees won't look stunning enough" and thus arrived at the "every few hundred to thousands of years" thing. (Compare page 295)

Researching Mayan culture and the beginnings of astronomy in various cultures was very fascinating and actually a lot of fun. Also writing this fic was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoyed it as well, unusual though it may be. Thank you all for reading. :-)


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